SY0-601 Threats, Attacks & Vulnerabilities 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which attack involves flooding a target system with traffic from multiple compromised hosts to make a service unavailable?
- Smurf attack
- Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) (Correct answer)
- Ping of death
- Teardrop attack
Correct answer: Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)
A DDoS attack uses a botnet of many compromised systems to overwhelm a target with traffic, denying service to legitimate users.
Question 2: An attacker compromises a website frequently visited by members of a target organization and embeds malware there. What type of attack is this?
- Drive-by download
- Spear phishing
- Watering hole attack (Correct answer)
- Typosquatting
Correct answer: Watering hole attack
A watering hole attack infects a website known to be visited by the intended victims, exploiting their trust in that site.
Question 3: Which type of attack sends forged ARP messages to associate the attacker's MAC address with the IP address of a legitimate host?
- DNS poisoning
- ARP spoofing (Correct answer)
- MAC flooding
- IP spoofing
Correct answer: ARP spoofing
ARP spoofing (poisoning) links the attacker's MAC address to a legitimate IP, redirecting LAN traffic through the attacker.
Question 4: A newly released software patch notes that a vulnerability was being exploited before the vendor was aware of it. What category does this vulnerability fall under?
- Legacy vulnerability
- Zero-day vulnerability (Correct answer)
- Known exploit
- Disclosed vulnerability
Correct answer: Zero-day vulnerability
A zero-day vulnerability is one that is exploited before the vendor knows about it, leaving zero days to develop a fix.
Question 5: Which threat actor type is typically motivated by financial gain and operates as a professional criminal organization?
- Hacktivist
- Script kiddie
- Organized crime (Correct answer)
- Nation-state actor
Correct answer: Organized crime
Organized crime groups are primarily financially motivated, conducting activities like ransomware campaigns and fraud for profit.
Question 6: An attacker registers a domain name with a common typo of a popular website (e.g., 'googie.com') to capture accidental visitors. What is this called?
- Domain hijacking
- URL hijacking / typosquatting (Correct answer)
- Pharming
- DNS spoofing
Correct answer: URL hijacking / typosquatting
Typosquatting (URL hijacking) registers misspelled versions of popular domains to capture traffic from users who mistype URLs.
Question 7: Which type of virus attaches itself to legitimate programs and activates when the host program runs?
- Macro virus
- File infector virus (Correct answer)
- Boot sector virus
- Polymorphic virus
Correct answer: File infector virus
A file infector virus attaches to executable files and spreads when the infected program is executed.
SY0-601 Threats, Attacks & Vulnerabilities 3
Which attack involves flooding a target system with traffic from multiple compromised hosts to make a service unavailable?