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1
Q

What are the three core principles of the CIA triad in information security?

A

Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

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2
Q

In the CIA triad, what does ‘Confidentiality’ refer to?

A

Information should only be viewed by authorised users.

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3
Q

In the CIA triad, what is the principle of ‘Integrity’?

A

Information should not be altered without appropriate authorisation.

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4
Q

What does ‘Availability’ mean in the context of the CIA triad?

A

Information should be available to legitimate users in line with the design of the system.

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5
Q

Define ‘vulnerability’ in the context of cyber security.

A

A limitation or weakness which opens a system to potential attack.

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6
Q

What is a ‘threat’ in cyber security?

A

Something or someone that poses potential harm to a system.

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7
Q

What is an ‘attack’ in cyber security?

A

An event that aims to exploit a vulnerability of a system.

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8
Q

The collection of all entry points an unauthorised attacker could attempt to exploit is known as the _____.

A

Attack Surface.

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9
Q

What is an ‘Attack Vector’?

A

The path an attacker has taken to gain unauthorised access to a system.

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10
Q

What are the three main categories of authentication factors?

A

Knowledge (something you know), Biometrics (something you are), and Token (something you have).

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11
Q

What is required for an authentication method to be considered Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)?

A

It must use a combination of authentication from at least two different factor categories.

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12
Q

In the context of access control, what is ‘Identification’?

A

The act of claiming an identity, for example, stating ‘I am Fred’.

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13
Q

What is the primary goal of an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)?

A

To gain stealthy, long-term access to a targeted system for data exfiltration.

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14
Q

What are the five main stages of an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) campaign?

A

Reconnaissance, Initial Compromise, Lateral Movement, Data Exfiltration, and Maintenance and Concealment.

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15
Q

In an APT, what occurs during the ‘Lateral Movement’ stage?

A

The attacker expands their access across the systems, such as compromising additional devices or increasing permissions.

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16
Q

In Unix-based systems, what do the ‘r’, ‘w’, and ‘x’ permissions stand for?

A

Read (r), write (w), and execute (x).

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17
Q

In the Unix access control model, what are the three user classifications for permissions?

A

Owner, Group, and World (Other).

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18
Q

What do the permissions ‘rwxrw-r–’ represent in the Unix access control model?

A

The Owner has read, write, and execute permissions; the Group has read and write permissions; and the World has only read permission.

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19
Q

In biometrics, what is the ‘Enrolment’ stage?

A

It is the process where a user’s biometric trait is measured and a template is extracted and stored for future comparisons.

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20
Q

What does the False Accept Rate (FAR) measure in a biometric system?

A

It is a measure of the likelihood of the system incorrectly accepting an access attempt by an unauthorised user.

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21
Q

What does the False Reject Rate (FRR) measure in a biometric system?

A

It is a measure of the likelihood of the system incorrectly rejecting an access attempt by an authorised user.

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22
Q

What is a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve used to illustrate in biometrics?

A

It plots the True Accept Rate (TAR) against the False Accept Rate (FAR) to show the performance of a biometric system at various threshold settings.

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23
Q

What is a significant drawback of retinal scanning compared to iris recognition?

A

It is more invasive, can be affected by disease over time, and requires specialist low-light equipment.

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24
Q

What two key metrics are used in keystroke dynamics for behavioural biometrics?

A

Dwell time (how long a key is pressed) and flight time (the time between key presses).

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25
What is an 'Insecure Direct Object Reference'?
A vulnerability where an application provides direct access to objects based on user-supplied input, allowing attackers to access unauthorised data by modifying the reference.
26
What vulnerability occurs when an application doesn't properly verify if a user is authorised to access specific functionality, even if the links are hidden?
Missing Function Level Access Control.
27
What is the primary defence against sensitive data exposure?
Encrypting or hashing sensitive data using appropriate methods and not storing data that is not needed.
28
What is an XML External Entities (XXE) vulnerability?
A flaw where an XML processor allows external entities to be included and evaluated, which can be exploited by providing a malicious URI.
29
What is the main purpose of the Cyber Kill Chain framework?
To identify and prevent cyber intrusions by breaking down the anatomy of an attack into distinct stages.
30
What is the first stage of the Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain?
Reconnaissance, which involves gathering information about the target system.
31
In the Cyber Kill Chain, what happens during the 'Weaponisation' stage?
An exploit is combined with a vulnerability (backdoor) to create a malicious payload, like malware.
32
The 'Delivery' stage of the Cyber Kill Chain involves ____.
transmitting the weaponised exploit to the target, for example, via a spear-phishing email or a malicious USB drive.
33
What is the objective of the 'Command and Control' (C2) stage in the Cyber Kill Chain?
To establish remote access and control over the victim machine, often using a Remote Access Trojan (RAT).
34
What is the purpose of the STRIDE threat modelling framework?
To support developers in identifying and classifying common security threats during the design phase.
35
What are the six threat categories in the STRIDE model?
Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, and Elevation of Privilege.
36
In STRIDE, 'Spoofing' is a threat to which security property?
Authentication.
37
The unauthorised modification of data is classified as which threat in the STRIDE model?
Tampering, which violates the property of Integrity.
38
What is a 'Repudiation' threat according to STRIDE?
When a user denies having performed an action, violating the principle of non-repudiation.
39
A user with read-only permissions managing to gain write capabilities is an example of which STRIDE threat?
Elevation of Privilege, which is a threat to Authorisation.
40
What is the primary function of a firewall?
To protect the boundary of an internal network from an external one by filtering network traffic based on a set of rules.
41
What is a 'whitelisting' policy for a firewall?
A policy that denies all traffic by default and only permits traffic that has been specifically allowed.
42
What is a Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) in network architecture?
A part of a network situated between the protected internal network and the untrusted external network, providing an additional layer of security.
43
What is the main difference between an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)?
An IDS monitors and alerts on potential violations, whereas an IPS can additionally take action to prevent the violation from occurring.
44
In cryptography, what is the term for the original, readable message?
Plaintext.
45
The encrypted, unreadable version of a message is called ____.
Ciphertext.
46
What is a substitution cipher?
A method of encryption where units of plaintext are replaced with ciphertext according to a fixed system.
47
In modern block ciphers, what is the purpose of an S-box (Substitution-box)?
To perform substitution on small blocks of bits to obscure the relationship between the key and the ciphertext, providing confusion.
48
What is the function of a P-box (Permutation-box) in a block cipher?
To transpose bits, spreading the influence of one plaintext bit over many ciphertext bits to achieve diffusion.
49
What is 'diffusion' in the context of cryptography?
A property where changing a single bit of the plaintext results in changes to multiple bits of the ciphertext.
50
What is 'confusion' in cryptography?
A property that makes the relationship between the key and the ciphertext as complex as possible, so each ciphertext bit depends on multiple parts of the key.
51
How does a stream cipher operate?
It encrypts and decrypts data one bit or byte at a time, typically by performing a bitwise XOR with a keystream.
52
How does a block cipher operate?
It encrypts data in fixed-size chunks called blocks.
53
What is a major security weakness of the Electronic Code Book (ECB) mode of operation?
Identical plaintext blocks are encrypted into identical ciphertext blocks, revealing patterns in the data.
54
How does Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode improve upon ECB?
Each block of plaintext is XORed with the previous ciphertext block before being encrypted, which hides patterns.
55
What is a Feistel structure in a block cipher?
A structure that splits a block of data into two halves and processes them through multiple rounds of substitution and permutation, where encryption and decryption are very similar.
56
What are the four main operations in a round of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)?
SubBytes, ShiftRows, MixColumns, and AddRoundKey.
57
Which operation is omitted from the final round of AES encryption?
The MixColumns step.
58
The 'AddRoundKey' step in AES performs what mathematical operation?
A bitwise XOR between the current state matrix and the round key.
59
What is the key exchange problem in symmetric cryptography?
The challenge of securely distributing a shared secret key between two parties over an insecure channel.
60
How does the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (DHKE) protocol solve the key exchange problem?
It allows two parties to establish a shared secret key over an insecure channel without the key itself ever being transmitted.
61
In RSA public-key cryptography, which key is used for encryption?
The recipient's public key.
62
In RSA, which key is used for decryption?
The recipient's private key.
63
To create a digital signature, a message hash is encrypted with the _____.
sender's private key.
64
How does a recipient verify a digital signature?
By decrypting the signature with the sender's public key and comparing the result to a freshly computed hash of the received message.
65
A cryptographic hash function must have the 'one-way' property, also known as ____.
Pre-image resistance.
66
What does 'strong collision resistance' mean for a hash function?
It is computationally infeasible to find two different messages that hash to the same value.
67
What is the purpose of a Message Authentication Code (MAC)?
To ensure both the integrity (the message hasn't been tampered with) and the authenticity (the message is from the claimed sender) of a message.
68
What is steganography?
The practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video.
69
How does the Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography algorithm work?
It hides data by replacing the least significant bit of each colour value in the pixels of a cover image with bits from the payload message.
70
What is a 'bitplane' in the context of digital images?
A matrix comprising the i-th bit of each pixel in a digital image for a specific colour channel.
71
In the BPCS steganography algorithm, what does a complexity score greater than 0.3 indicate about an 8x8 bit segment?
The segment is considered sufficiently complex and random-looking, meaning it can be replaced with payload data without causing a noticeable visual impact.
72
What is 'packet sniffing'?
The process of monitoring and capturing data packets as they pass through a computer network.
73
A _____ attack involves an attacker secretly relaying and possibly altering the communication between two parties who believe they are directly communicating with each other.
Machine in the Middle (MITM).
74
What is ARP spoofing?
An attack where a malicious actor sends falsified Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) messages over a local area network to associate their MAC address with the IP address of another host.
75
How does a replay attack work?
An attacker intercepts a valid data transmission (like authentication credentials) and maliciously re-sends it at a later time to impersonate the original user.
76
What is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack?
An attack that targets servers to overload them, making a service unavailable to legitimate users.
77
How does a SYN flood attack cause a denial of service?
It sends a succession of SYN requests to a target's system but does not send the final ACK, leaving connections half-open and consuming server resources until they are exhausted.
78
What distinguishes a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack from a DoS attack?
A DDoS attack uses multiple, distributed infected computers (a botnet) to launch the attack, making it harder to trace and block.
79
What is port scanning?
A process which checks a host's ports to identify which are open, closed, or filtered, often as a precursor to an attack.
80
What is the primary purpose of the Kerberos protocol?
To provide strong, mutual authentication for client/server applications over an insecure network, mitigating replay attacks and improving usability.
81
In Kerberos, what is the role of the Authentication Server (AS)?
It authenticates the user at the start of a session and provides them with a Ticket-Granting Ticket (TGT).
82
What is the function of the Ticket-Granting Server (TGS) in Kerberos?
It issues service tickets to clients after they present a valid Ticket-Granting Ticket (TGT).
83
What is a Virtual Private Network (VPN)?
A technology that creates a secure, encrypted connection over a less secure network, such as the public internet.
84
What is 'tunnelling' in the context of a VPN?
The process of encapsulating packets with internal network addresses within packets that use internet addressing to traverse the public network securely.
85
What is a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack?
An attack where malicious client-side scripts are injected into web pages viewed by other users, which are then executed in the victim's browser.
86
What is the difference between Stored XSS and Reflected XSS?
In Stored XSS, the malicious script is permanently stored on the target server, while in Reflected XSS, the script is part of a request (often in the URL) and is reflected back by the server.
87
What is an effective defence against XSS attacks?
Performing input validation and HTML encoding on untrusted user data before it is rendered on a page.
88
What is an 'insecure deserialization' vulnerability?
A flaw where an application deserializes untrusted data without sufficient checks, potentially allowing an attacker to execute malicious code by providing a crafted, serialized object.
89
In PHP, what is the purpose of using a prepared statement for SQL queries?
It separates the SQL command logic from the data, preventing user input from being interpreted as part of the SQL command, thus mitigating SQL injection attacks.
90
How can an attacker use the SQL comment sequence '--' to bypass authentication?
By injecting it into a query, they can cause the remainder of the SQL statement, such as the password check, to be ignored by the database.
91
What is the role of a Certificate Authority (CA) in a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)?
A CA is a trusted entity that digitally signs and issues certificates to verify the ownership of a public key.
92
What security guarantee does (Perfect) Forward Secrecy provide in protocols like TLS 1.3?
It ensures that if a long-term key is compromised, past and future communication sessions remain confidential because session keys are ephemeral.
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