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CompTIA Security+ Certification Certification Exam

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CompTIA SY0-401 Free Practice Questions

Q1. RC4 is a strong encryption protocol that is generally used with which of the following? 

A. WPA2 CCMP 

B. PEAP 

C. WEP 

D. EAP-TLS 

Answer:

Explanation: 

Q2. Which of the following components of an all-in-one security appliance would MOST likely be configured in order to restrict access to peer-to-peer file sharing websites? 

A. Spam filter 

B. URL filter 

C. Content inspection 

D. Malware inspection 

Answer:

Explanation: 

The question asks how to prevent access to peer-to-peer file sharing websites. You access a website by browsing to a URL using a Web browser or peer-to-peer file sharing client software. A URL filter is used to block URLs (websites) to prevent users accessing the website. 

Incorrect Answer: 

A: A spam filter is used for email. All inbound (and sometimes outbound) email is passed through the spam filter to detect spam emails. The spam emails are then discarded or tagged as potential spam according to the spam filter configuration. Spam filters do not prevent users accessing peer-to-peer file sharing websites. 

C: Content inspection is the process of inspecting the content of a web page as it is downloaded. The content can then be blocked if it doesn’t comply with the company’s web policy. Content-control software determines what content will be available or perhaps more often what content will be blocked. Content inspection does not prevent users accessing peer-to-peer file sharing websites (although it could block the content of the sites as it is downloaded). 

D: Malware inspection is the process of scanning a computer system for malware. Malware inspection does not prevent users accessing peer-to-peer file sharing websites. 

References: http://www.provision.ro/threat-management/web-application-security/url-filtering#pagei-1|pagep-1| Stewart, James Michael, CompTIA Security+ Review Guide, Sybex, Indianapolis, 2014, pp 18, 19. 

Q3. When a new network drop was installed, the cable was run across several fluorescent lights. The users of the new network drop experience intermittent connectivity. Which of the following environmental controls was MOST likely overlooked during installation? 

A. Humidity sensors 

B. EMI shielding 

C. Channel interference 

D. Cable kinking 

Answer:

Explanation: 

Shielding refers to the process of preventing electronic emissions from your computer systems from being used to gather intelligence and preventing outside electronic emissions from disrupting your information-processing abilities. In this case you are experiencing intermittent connectivity since Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) was not taken into account when running the cables over fluorescent lighting. 

Q4. A customer service department has a business need to send high volumes of confidential information to customers electronically. All emails go through a DLP scanner. Which of the following is the BEST solution to meet the business needs and protect confidential information? 

A. Automatically encrypt impacted outgoing emails 

B. Automatically encrypt impacted incoming emails 

C. Monitor impacted outgoing emails 

D. Prevent impacted outgoing emails 

Answer:

Explanation: 

Encryption is done to protect confidentiality and integrity of data. It also provides authentication, nonrepudiation and access control to the data. Since all emails go through a DLP scanner and it is outgoing main that requires protection then the best option is to put a system in place that will encrypt the outgoing emails automatically. 

Q5. The information security team does a presentation on social media and advises the participants not to provide too much personal information on social media web sites. This advice would BEST protect people from which of the following? 

A. Rainbow tables attacks 

B. Brute force attacks 

C. Birthday attacks 

D. Cognitive passwords attacks 

Answer:

Explanation: 

Social Networking Dangers are ‘amplified’ in that social media networks are designed to mass distribute personal messages. If an employee reveals too much personal information it would be easy for miscreants to use the messages containing the personal information to work out possible passwords. 

Q6. A company that purchased an HVAC system for the datacenter is MOST concerned with which of the following? 

A. Availability 

B. Integrity 

C. Confidentiality 

D. Fire suppression 

Answer:

Explanation: 

Availability means simply to make sure that the data and systems are available for authorized users. Data backups, redundant systems, and disaster recovery plans all support availability; as does environmental support by means of HVAC. 

Q7. Ann, a newly hired human resource employee, sent out confidential emails with digital signatures, to an unintended group. Which of the following would prevent her from denying accountability? 

A. Email Encryption 

B. Steganography 

C. Non Repudiation 

D. Access Control 

Answer:

Explanation: 

Nonrepudiation prevents one party from denying actions they carried out. 

Q8. Which of the following is an important implementation consideration when deploying a wireless network that uses a shared password? 

A. Authentication server 

B. Server certificate 

C. Key length 

D. EAP method 

Answer:

Explanation: 

Key length is the main issue of concern since the wireless network uses a shared password. With risks of shared passwords makes the length of the password a crucial factor to risk mitigation. 

Q9. After a recent security breach, the network administrator has been tasked to update and backup all router and switch configurations. The security administrator has been tasked to enforce stricter security policies. All users were forced to undergo additional user awareness training. All of these actions are due to which of the following types of risk mitigation strategies? 

A. Change management 

B. Implementing policies to prevent data loss 

C. User rights and permissions review 

D. Lessons learned 

Answer:

Explanation: 

Incident response procedures involves: Preparation; Incident identification; Escalation and notification; Mitigation steps; Lessons learned; Reporting; Recover/reconstitution procedures; First responder; Incident isolation (Quarantine; Device removal); Data breach; Damage and loss control. Described in the question is a situation where a security breach had occurred and its response which shows that lessons have been learned and used to put in place measures that will prevent any future security breaches of the same kind. 

Q10. A company needs to receive data that contains personally identifiable information. The company requires both the transmission and data at rest to be encrypted. Which of the following achieves this goal? (Select TWO). 

A. SSH 

B. TFTP 

C. NTLM 

D. TKIP 

E. SMTP 

F. PGP/GPG 

Answer: A,F 

Explanation: 

We can use SSH to encrypt the transmission and PGP/GPG to encrypt the data at rest (on disk). 

A: Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic protocol that can be used to secure network communication. It establishes a secure tunnel over an insecure network. 

F: Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption solution that can be used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions and to increase the security of e-mail communications. 

Q11. Sara, a user, downloads a keygen to install pirated software. After running the keygen, system performance is extremely slow and numerous antivirus alerts are displayed. Which of the following BEST describes this type of malware? 

A. Logic bomb 

B. Worm 

C. Trojan 

D. Adware 

Answer:

Explanation: 

In computers, a Trojan is a program in which malicious or harmful code is contained inside apparently harmless programming or data in such a way that it can get control and do its chosen form of damage, such as ruining the file allocation table on your hard disk. In one celebrated case, a Trojan was a program that was supposed to find and destroy computer viruses. A Trojan horse may be widely redistributed as part of a computer virus. 

Q12. Which of the following can be implemented if a security administrator wants only certain devices connecting to the wireless network? 

A. Disable SSID broadcast 

B. Install a RADIUS server 

C. Enable MAC filtering 

D. Lowering power levels on the AP 

Answer:

Explanation: 

MAC filtering is commonly used in wireless networks. In computer networking, MAC Filtering (or GUI filtering, or layer 2 address filtering) refers to a security access control method whereby the 48-bit address assigned to each network card is used to determine access to the network. MAC addresses are uniquely assigned to each card, so using MAC filtering on a network permits and denies network access to specific devices through the use of blacklists and whitelists. While the restriction of network access through the use of lists is straightforward, an individual person is not identified by a MAC address, rather a device only, so an authorized person will need to have a whitelist entry for each device that he or she would use to access the network. 

Q13. Several employees submit the same phishing email to the administrator. The administrator finds that the links in the email are not being blocked by the company’s security device. Which of the following might the administrator do in the short term to prevent the emails from being received? 

A. Configure an ACL 

B. Implement a URL filter 

C. Add the domain to a block list 

D. Enable TLS on the mail server 

Answer:

Explanation: 

Blocking e-mail is the same as preventing the receipt of those e-mails and this is done by applying a filter. But the filter must be configured to block it. Thus you should add that specific domain from where the e-mails are being sent to the list of addresses that is to be blocked. 

Q14. A network analyst received a number of reports that impersonation was taking place on the network. Session tokens were deployed to mitigate this issue and defend against which of the following attacks? 

A. Replay 

B. DDoS 

C. Smurf 

D. Ping of Death 

Answer:

Explanation: 

A replay attack (also known as playback attack) is a form of network attack in which a valid data transmission is maliciously or fraudulently repeated or delayed. This is carried out either by the originator or by an adversary who intercepts the data and retransmits it, possibly as part of a masquerade attack by IP packet substitution (such as stream cipher attack). 

For example: Suppose Alice wants to prove her identity to Bob. Bob requests her password as proof of identity, which Alice dutifully provides (possibly after some transformation like a hash function); meanwhile, Eve is eavesdropping on the conversation and keeps the password (or the hash). After the interchange is over, Eve (posing as Alice) connects to Bob; when asked for a proof of identity, Eve sends Alice's password (or hash) read from the last session, which Bob accepts thus granting access to Eve. 

Countermeasures: A way to avoid replay attacks is by using session tokens: Bob sends a one-time token to Alice, which Alice uses to transform the password and send the result to Bob (e.g. computing a hash function of the session token appended to the password). On his side Bob performs the same computation; if and only if both values match, the login is successful. Now suppose Eve has captured this value and tries to use it on another session; Bob sends a different session token, and when Eve replies with the captured value it will be different from Bob's computation. Session tokens should be chosen by a (pseudo-) random process. Otherwise Eve may be able to pose as Bob, presenting some predicted future token, and convince Alice to use that token in her transformation. Eve can then replay her reply at a later time (when the previously predicted token is actually presented by Bob), and Bob will accept the authentication. One-time passwords are similar to session tokens in that the password expires after it has been used or after a very short amount of time. They can be used to authenticate individual transactions in addition to sessions. The technique has been widely implemented in personal online banking systems. Bob can also send nonces but should then include a message authentication code (MAC), which Alice should check. Timestamping is another way of preventing a replay attack. Synchronization should be achieved using a secure protocol. For example Bob periodically broadcasts the time on his clock together with a MAC. When Alice wants to send Bob a message, she includes her best estimate of the time on his clock in her message, which is also authenticated. Bob only accepts messages for which the timestamp is within a reasonable tolerance. The advantage of this scheme is that Bob does not need to generate (pseudo-) random numbers, with the trade-off being that replay attacks, if they are performed quickly enough i.e. within that 'reasonable' limit, could succeed. 

Q15. Human Resources (HR) would like executives to undergo only two specific security training programs a year. Which of the following provides the BEST level of security training for the executives? (Select TWO). 

A. Acceptable use of social media 

B. Data handling and disposal 

C. Zero day exploits and viruses 

D. Phishing threats and attacks 

E. Clean desk and BYOD 

F. Information security awareness 

Answer: D,F 

Explanation: 

Managers/ i.e. executives in the company are concerned with more global issues in the organization, including enforcing security policies and procedures. Managers should receive additional training or exposure that explains the issues, threats, and methods of dealing with threats. Management will also be concerned about productivity impacts and enforcement and how the various departments are affected by security policies. Phishing is a form of social engineering in which you ask someone for a piece of information that you are missing by making it look as if it is a legitimate request. An email might look as if it is from a bank and contain some basic information, such as the user’s name. Executives an easily fall prey to phishing if they are not trained to lookout for these attacks.