Free Practice Questions for CREST CPTIA Exam

Racheal should check for DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) in the email headers to analyze the authenticity of received emails. DKIM is an email authentication method designed to detect email spoofing. It provides a way for the receiver to check that an email claimed to have come from a specific domain was indeed authorized by the owner of that domain. It achieves this by affixing a digital signature, linked to a domain name, to each outgoing email message. The recipient can verify this signature to confirm that the email was not altered during its transmission and that it indeed comes from the specified domain, thereby helping to prevent email spoofing. Other options like SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), POP (Post Office Protocol), and ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) are not directly related to email authenticity checks.References:Incident Handler (CREST CPTIA) certification materials cover various protocols and standards for ensuring the security and authenticity of communications, including email security protocols like DKIM.

ISO/IEC 27002 is a standard that provides best practice recommendations on information security controls for use by those responsible for initiating, implementing, or maintaining information security management systems (ISMSs). It covers areas such as risk assessment, human resource security, operational security, and communications security, among others, providing a framework for establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining, and improving an ISMS. ISO/IEC 27035 pertains to information security incident management, PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) deals with the security of cardholder data, and RFC 2196 is a guide for computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs), not a standard for implementing ISMSs.References:The CREST CPTIA curriculum includes the study of various standards and frameworks that support information security management and governance, including ISO/IEC 27002, highlighting its role in guiding organizations in implementing effective security controls.

Nation-state attribution involves identifying a specific country or government as the sponsor behind a cyber-attack or intrusion. This type of threat attribution is focused on determining the involvement of state actors in cyber operations against specific targets, which often involves sophisticated, well-planned, and executed cyber campaigns. Alexis's efforts to identify and attribute the actors behind the attack to a specific nation-state fall under this category, as she seeks to uncover the geopolitical motives and the extent of state sponsorship behind the incident. Nation-state attribution requires analyzing a variety of indicators, including technical evidence, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and contextual intelligence. This is distinct from campaign attribution, which focuses on linking attacks to a specific campaign or operation, true attribution, which aims at identifying the actual individuals behind an attack, and intrusion set attribution, which involves attributing a set of malicious activities to a particular threat actor orgroup.References:The Incident Handler (CREST CPTIA) certification program includes discussions on various types of threat attributions, highlighting the challenges and methodologies involved in attributing cyber-attacks to specific actors, including nation-states.

A zero-day attack exploits vulnerabilities in software or hardware that are unknown to the vendor or for which a patch has not yet been released. These attacks are particularly dangerous because they take advantage of the window of time between the vulnerability's discovery and the availability of a fix, leaving systems exposed to potential exploitation. Zero-day attacks require a proactive and comprehensive approach to security, including the use of advanced threat detection systems and threat intelligence to identify and mitigate potential threats before they can be exploited.References:

"Understanding Zero-Day Exploits," by MITRE

"Zero-Day Threats: What They Are and How to Protect Against Them," by Symantec

Auditing the system and network log files is a crucial step in the incident triage phase of the incident response and handling process. During incident triage, incident handlers assess and prioritize incidents based on their severity, impact, and the urgency of the response required. Part of this assessment involves reviewing log files to understand the nature of the incident, its scope, and the systems or networks affected. This information helps in categorizing the incident and deciding on the appropriate response actions. Unlike containment, which aims to limit the damage, incident disclosure, which involves communicating about the incident, or incident eradication, which focuses on removing the threat, incident triage is about evaluating and prioritizing the incident based on detailed log analysis among other factors.References:The Incident Handler (CREST CPTIA) courses and study guides emphasize the role of incident triage in the early stages of the incident response process, highlighting the importance of log file analysis in assessing and prioritizing incidents.

The network administrator collected log files generated by a traffic monitoring system, which falls under the category of low-level data. This type of data might not appear useful at first glance but can reveal significant insights about network activity and potential threats upon thorough analysis. Low-level data includes raw logs, packet captures, and other granular details that, when analyzed properly, can help detect anomalous behaviors or indicators of compromise within the network. This type of information is essential for detection and response efforts, allowing security teams to identify and mitigate threats in real-time.References:

"Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers through Cyberspace," by Sherri Davidoff and Jonathan Ham, Prentice Hall

"Real-Time Detection of Anomalous Activity in Dynamic, Heterogeneous Information Systems," IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

James's activities, including creating anonymous access to cloud services to carry out attacks such as password and key cracking, hosting malicious data, and conducting DDoS attacks, exemplify the abuse and nefarious use of cloud services. This threat involves exploiting cloud computing resources to conduct malicious activities, which can impact the cloud service provider as well as other users of the cloud services. This abuse ranges from using the cloud platform's resources for computationally intensive tasks like cracking passwords or encryption keys to conducting DDoS attacks that can disrupt services for legitimate users.References:The Incident Handler (CREST CPTIA) certification emphasizes understanding cloud-specific security challenges, including the abuse of cloud services, and recommends strategies for mitigating such risks, highlighting the need for comprehensive security measures to protect cloud environments.

When Investigator Ian gives you a drive image to investigate, the type of analysis you are performing is static analysis. Static analysis involves examining the contents of a drive, file, or binary without executing the system or the application. It's about analyzing the data at rest. This type of analysis is crucial for forensics investigations because it allows for the examination of files, directories, and system information without altering any state or data, thereby preserving the integrity of the evidence. Static analysis is contrasted with dynamic analysis, which involves analyzing a system in operation (real-time or live) or executing the application to observe its behavior.References:Incident Handler (CREST CPTIA) courses and study guides highlight the importance of static analysis in digital forensics, detailing methods for examining disk images, files, and other digital artifacts to gather evidence without compromising its integrity.

Email-bombing refers to the attack where the attacker sends a massive volume of emails to a specific email address or mail server in order to overflow the mailbox or overwhelm the server, potentially causing it to fail or deny service to legitimate users. This attack can disrupt communications and, in some cases, lead to the targeted email account being disabled. Masquerading involves pretending to be another legitimate user, spoofing is the creation of emails (or other communications) with a forged sender address, and a smurf attack is a specific type of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that exploits Internet Protocol (IP) and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to flood a target with traffic. Email-bombing specifically targets email services with the goal of causing disruption by overflowing inboxes.References:CREST CPTIA courses and study guides often include discussions on various attack vectors used by cybercriminals, including email-based threats and their impact on organizational security.

Wireshark is a widely used network protocol analyzer that helps in capturing and interactively browsing the traffic on a network. It is an essential tool for incident responders like Eric who are developing incident-handling plans and procedures. By analyzing network traffic, Wireshark allows users to see what is happening on their network at a microscopic level, making it invaluable for troubleshooting network problems, analyzing security incidents, and understanding network behavior. Whois is used for querying databases that store registered users or assignees of an Internet resource. Burp Suite is a tool for testing web application security, and FaceNiff is used for session hijacking within a WiFi network, which makes Wireshark the best choice for analyzing network traffic.References:CREST materials often reference Wireshark as a fundamental tool for network analysis, crucial for incident handlers in the analysis phase of incident response.