Certified Ethical Hacker Vulnerability Assessment and Exploitation 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which exploitation phase in CEH involves maintaining access to a compromised system for future use?
- Reconnaissance
- Scanning
- Gaining Access
- Maintaining Access (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Maintaining Access
The Maintaining Access phase involves installing backdoors, rootkits, or Trojans to ensure persistent access to the compromised system for later use.
Question 2: What is a 'zero-day vulnerability'?
- A vulnerability that has existed for zero days
- A vulnerability with a CVSS score of zero
- A previously unknown vulnerability with no available patch (Correct answer)
- A vulnerability that only affects systems on day zero of deployment
Correct answer: A previously unknown vulnerability with no available patch
A zero-day vulnerability is a security flaw that is unknown to the vendor and has no available patch, making it particularly dangerous and valuable to attackers.
Question 3: Which Metasploit payload type creates a connection from the target back to the attacker's machine?
- Bind Shell
- Reverse Shell (Correct answer)
- Staged Payload
- Inline Payload
Correct answer: Reverse Shell
A reverse shell payload causes the target machine to initiate a connection back to the attacker, often bypassing inbound firewall rules that block incoming connections.
Question 4: What is the purpose of 'fuzzing' in vulnerability research?
- Obfuscating malware to evade antivirus
- Sending malformed or random data to an application to discover crashes and bugs (Correct answer)
- Encrypting exploit payloads for delivery
- Scanning for open ports with varying timing
Correct answer: Sending malformed or random data to an application to discover crashes and bugs
Fuzzing (fuzz testing) inputs large volumes of random or malformed data into an application to trigger unexpected behavior, crashes, or security vulnerabilities.
Question 5: Which type of exploit takes advantage of a buffer overflow to overwrite the return address and redirect execution flow?
- Heap Spray
- Stack-Based Buffer Overflow (Correct answer)
- Integer Overflow
- Format String Attack
Correct answer: Stack-Based Buffer Overflow
A stack-based buffer overflow writes beyond a buffer's bounds on the stack, overwriting the return address with an attacker-controlled value to redirect code execution.
Question 6: What does 'post-exploitation' refer to in a penetration testing engagement?
- Writing the final penetration test report
- Actions taken after gaining initial access, such as privilege escalation and lateral movement (Correct answer)
- Cleaning up tools and logs after the test
- The initial vulnerability scanning phase
Correct answer: Actions taken after gaining initial access, such as privilege escalation and lateral movement
Post-exploitation encompasses activities after initial compromise including privilege escalation, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and establishing persistence.
Certified Ethical Hacker Vulnerability Assessment and Exploitation 2
Which exploitation phase in CEH involves maintaining access to a compromised system for future use?