Question 1

What type of attack intercepts communication between two parties without either party knowing, allowing the attacker to read and potentially alter the messages?

Accepted Answer

A Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack. The attacker positions themselves between two communicating hosts, intercepting and potentially modifying traffic in transit.

Question 2

What is a Smurf attack and which protocol does it exploit?

Accepted Answer

A Smurf attack is a DDoS amplification attack that exploits ICMP. The attacker sends ICMP echo requests to a network broadcast address with a spoofed source IP of the victim, causing all hosts to reply to the victim.

Question 3

What distinguishes a SYN flood attack from a standard DDoS volumetric attack?

Accepted Answer

A SYN flood exploits the TCP three-way handshake by sending many SYN packets without completing the handshake, exhausting the server's connection table (half-open connections) rather than overwhelming bandwidth.

Question 4

What is a replay attack in the context of network security?

Accepted Answer

A replay attack occurs when an attacker captures valid network transmissions (such as authentication credentials) and retransmits them later to gain unauthorized access without needing to decrypt the data.

Question 5

What is the primary goal of a DNS poisoning (cache poisoning) attack?

Accepted Answer

DNS cache poisoning inserts fraudulent DNS records into a resolver's cache, redirecting users who query that resolver to malicious IP addresses instead of legitimate ones, enabling phishing or malware distribution.

CISSP Network Security

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