IT Security: Defense against the digital dark arts. Week1: Understanding Security Threats

In the CIA Triad, "Confidentiality" means ensuring that data is: not accessible by unwanted parties; "Confidentiality," in this context, means preventing unauthorized third parties from gaining access to the data. In the CIA Triad, "Integrity" means ensuring that data is: accurate and was not tampered with; "Integrity," in this context, means ensuring that the data remains intact, uncorrupted, and not tampered with. The data that gets sent is the exact same as the data that gets received. In the CIA Triad, "Availability" means ensuring that data is: available and people can access it; "Availability," in this context, means ensuring that data and services remain accessible to those who are authorized to access them. What's the relationship between a vulnerability and an exploit? an exploit takes advantage of a vulnerability to run arbitrary code or gain access; A vulnerability is a bug or hole in a system. It allows an attacker to gain access by using an exploit, which takes advantage of the vulnerability. Which statement is true for both a worm and a virus? they're self-replicating and selfpropagating; Both worms and viruses are capable of spreading themselves using a variety of transmission means. Check all examples of types of malware: worms adware viruses; These three are all examples of unwanted software that can cause adverse affects to an infected system, which is exactly what malware isWhat are the characteristics of a rootkit? Check all that apply. Is difficult to detect; A rootkit is designed to provide administrator-level access to a third party without the system owner's knowledge. Given this, rootkits are usually designed to avoid detection and can be difficult to detect. provides elevated credentials; A rootkit is designed to provide administrator-level access to a third party without the system owner's knowledge. Given this, rootkits are usually designed to avoid detection and can be difficult to detect. What are the dangers of a man-in-the-middle attack? Check all that apply. an attacker can modify traffic in transit an attacker can block or redirect traffic an attacker can eavesdrop on unencrypted traffic; A man-in-the-middle attack means that the attacker has access to your network traffic. This allows them to eavesdrop, modify traffic in transit, or block traffic entirely. Yikes! Why is a DNS cache poisoning attack dangerous? Check all that apply. It affects any clients querying the poisoned DNS server it allows an attacker to redirect targets to malicious web servers; By inserting fake DNS records into a DNS server's cache, every client that queries this record will be served the fake information. This allows an attacker to redirect clients to a web server of their choosing. Which of the following is true of a DDoS attack? Attack traffic comes from lots of different hosts; The "Distributed" in DDoS means that the attack traffic is distributed across a large number of hosts, resulting in the attack coming from many different machines.