ISC2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner Exam

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates information from domain names with each of the assigned entities. Most prominently, it translates easily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating computer services and devices worldwide. The Domain Name System is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet. This article presents a functional description of the Domain Name System.

For your exam you should know below information general Internet terminology:

Network access point - Internet service providers access internet using net access point.A Network Access Point (NAP) was a public network exchange facility where Internet service providers (ISPs) connected with one another in peering arrangements. The NAPs were a key component in the transition from the 1990s NSFNET era (when many networks were government sponsored and commercial traffic was prohibited) to the commercial Internet providers of today. They were often points of considerable Internet congestion.

Internet Service Provider (ISP) - An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. Internet service providers may be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned. Internet services typically provided by ISPs include Internet access, Internet transit, domain name registration, web hosting, co-location.

Telnet or Remote Terminal Control Protocol -A terminal emulation program for TCP/IP networks such as the Internet. The Telnet program runs on your computer and connects your PC to a server on the network. You can then enter commands through the Telnet program and they will be executed as if you were entering them directly on the server console. This enables you to control the server and communicate with other servers on the network. To start a Telnet session, you must log in to a server by entering a valid username and password. Telnet is a common way to remotely control Web servers.

Internet Link- Internet link is a connection between Internet users and the Internet service provider.

Secure Shell or Secure Socket Shell (SSH) - Secure Shell (SSH), sometimes known as Secure Socket Shell, is a UNIX-based command interface and protocol for securely getting access to a remote computer. It is widely used by network administrators to control Web and other kinds of servers remotely. SSH is actually a suite of three utilities - slogin, ssh, and scp - that are secure versions of the earlier UNIX utilities, rlogin, rsh, and rcp. SSH commands are encrypted and secure in several ways. Both ends of the client/server connection are authenticated using a digital certificate, and passwords are protected by being encrypted.

Domain Name System (DNS) - The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates information from domain names with each of the assigned entities. Most prominently, it translates easily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating computer services and devices worldwide. The Domain Name System is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet. This article presents a functional description of the Domain Name System.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) - The File Transfer Protocol or FTP is a client/server application that is used to move files from one system to another. The client connects to the FTP server, authenticates and is given access that the server is configured to permit. FTP servers can also be configured to allow anonymous access by logging in with an email address but no password. Once connected, the client may move around between directories with commands available

Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) - SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a TCP/IP protocol used in sending and receiving e-mail. However, since it is limited in its ability to queue messages at the receiving end, it is usually used with one of two other protocols, POP3 or IMAP, that let the user save messages in a server mailbox and download them periodically from the server. In other words, users typically use a program that uses SMTP for sending e-mail and either POP3 or IMAP for receiving e-mail. On Unix-based systems, send mail is the most widely-used SMTP server for e-mail. A commercial package, Send mail, includes a POP3 server. Microsoft Exchange includes an SMTP server and can also be set up to include POP3 support.

The following answers are incorrect:

SMTP - Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) - SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a TCP/IP protocol used in sending and receiving e-mail. However, since it is limited in its ability to queue messages at the receiving end, it is usually used with one of two other protocols, POP3 or IMAP, that let the user save messages in a server mailbox and download them periodically from the server. In other words, users typically use a program that uses SMTP for sending e-mail and either POP3 or IMAP for receiving e-mail. On Unix-based systems, send mail is the most widely-used SMTP server for e-mail. A commercial package, Send mail, includes a POP3 server. Microsoft Exchange includes an SMTP server and can also be set up to include POP3 support.

FTP - The File Transfer Protocol or FTP is a client/server application that is used to move files from one system to another. The client connects to the FTP server, authenticates and is given access that the server is configured to permit. FTP servers can also be configured to allow anonymous access by logging in with an email address but no password. Once connected, the client may move around between directories with commands available

SSH - Secure Shell (SSH), sometimes known as Secure Socket Shell, is a UNIX-based command interface and protocol for securely getting access to a remote computer. It is widely used by network administrators to control Web and other kinds of servers remotely. SSH is actually a suite of three utilities - slogin, ssh, and scp - that are secure versions of the earlier UNIX utilities, rlogin, rsh, and rcp. SSH commands are encrypted and secure in several ways. Both ends of the client/server connection are authenticated using a digital certificate, and passwords are protected by being encrypted.

The following reference(s) were/was used to create this question:

CISA review

manual 2014 page number 273 and 274

Instead of using a Certificate Authority, PGP uses a 'Web of Trust', where users can certify each other in a mesh model, which is best applied to smaller groups.

In cryptography, a web of trust is a concept used in PGP, GnuPG, and other OpenPGP compatible systems to establish the authenticity of the binding between a public key and its owner. Its decentralized trust model is an alternative to the centralized trust model of a public key infrastructure (PKI), which relies exclusively on a certificate authority (or a hierarchy of such). The web of trust concept was first put forth by PGP creator Phil Zimmermann in 1992 in the manual for PGP version 2.0.

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security of e-mail communications. It was created by Phil Zimmermann in 1991.

As per Shon Harris's book:

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) was designed by Phil Zimmerman as a freeware e-mail security program and was released in 1991. It was the first widespread public key encryption program. PGP is a complete cryptosystem that uses cryptographic protection to protect e-mail and files. It can use RSA public key encryption for key management and use IDEA symmetric cipher for bulk encryption of data, although the user has the option of picking different types of algorithms for these functions. PGP can provide confidentiality by using the IDEA encryption algorithm, integrity by using the MD5 hashing algorithm, authentication by using the public key certificates, and nonrepudiation by using cryptographically signed messages. PGP initially used its own type of digital certificates rather than what is used in PKI, but they both have similar purposes. Today PGP support X.509 V3 digital certificates.

Reference(s) used for this question:

KRUTZ,

Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, John Wiley & Sons, 2001, Chapter 4: Cryptography (page 169).

Shon Harris, CISSP All in One book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

TIPTON, Hal, (ISC)2, Introduction to the CISSP Exam presentation.

XSS or Cross-Site Scripting is a threat to web applications where malicious code is placed on a website that attacks the use using their existing authenticated session status.

Cross-Site Scripting attacks are a type of injection problem, in which malicious scripts are injected into the otherwise benign and trusted web sites. Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks occur when an attacker uses a web application to send malicious code, generally in the form of a browser side script, to a different end user. Flaws that allow these attacks to succeed are quite widespread and occur anywhere a web application uses input from a user in the output it generates without validating or encoding it.

An attacker can use XSS to send a malicious script to an unsuspecting user. The end user's browser has no way to know that the script should not be trusted, and will execute the script. Because it thinks the script came from a trusted source, the malicious script can access any cookies, session tokens, or other sensitive information retained by your browser and used with that site. These scripts can even rewrite the content of the HTML page.

Mitigation:

Configure your IPS - Intrusion Prevention System to detect and suppress this traffic.

Input Validation on the web application to normalize inputted data.

Set web apps to bind session cookies to the IP Address of the legitimate user and only permit that IP Address to use that cookie.

See the XSS (Cross Site Scripting) Prevention Cheat Sheet

See the Abridged XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet

See the DOM based XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet

See the OWASP Development Guide article on Phishing.

See the OWASP Development Guide article on Data Validation.

The following answers are incorrect:

Intrusion Detection Systems: Sorry. IDS Systems aren't usually the target of XSS attacks but a properly-configured IDS/IPS can 'detect and report on malicious string and suppress the TCP connection in an attempt to mitigate the threat.

Firewalls: Sorry. Firewalls aren't usually the target of XSS attacks.

DNS Servers: Same as above, DNS Servers aren't usually targeted in XSS attacks but they play a key role in the domain name resolution in the XSS attack process.

The following reference(s) was used to create this question:

CCCure Holistic Security+ CBT and Curriculum

and

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-site_Scripting_%28XSS%29

Instead of using a Certificate Authority, PGP uses a 'Web of Trust', where users can certify each other in a mesh model, which is best applied to smaller groups.

In cryptography, a web of trust is a concept used in PGP, GnuPG, and other OpenPGP compatible systems to establish the authenticity of the binding between a public key and its owner. Its decentralized trust model is an alternative to the centralized trust model of a public key infrastructure (PKI), which relies exclusively on a certificate authority (or a hierarchy of such). The web of trust concept was first put forth by PGP creator Phil Zimmermann in 1992 in the manual for PGP version 2.0.

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security of e-mail communications. It was created by Phil Zimmermann in 1991.

As per Shon Harris's book:

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) was designed by Phil Zimmerman as a freeware e-mail security program and was released in 1991. It was the first widespread public key encryption program. PGP is a complete cryptosystem that uses cryptographic protection to protect e-mail and files. It can use RSA public key encryption for key management and use IDEA symmetric cipher for bulk encryption of data, although the user has the option of picking different types of algorithms for these functions. PGP can provide confidentiality by using the IDEA encryption algorithm, integrity by using the MD5 hashing algorithm, authentication by using the public key certificates, and nonrepudiation by using cryptographically signed messages. PGP initially used its own type of digital certificates rather than what is used in PKI, but they both have similar purposes. Today PGP support X.509 V3 digital certificates.

Reference(s) used for this question:

KRUTZ,

Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, John Wiley & Sons, 2001, Chapter 4: Cryptography (page 169).

Shon Harris, CISSP All in One book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

TIPTON, Hal, (ISC)2, Introduction to the CISSP Exam presentation.

JAVA was developed so that the same program could be executed on multiple hardware and operating system platforms, it is not Architecture Specific.

The following answers are incorrect:

Object-oriented. Is not correct because JAVA is object-oriented. It should use the object-oriented programming methodology.

Distributed. Is incorrect because JAVA was developed to be able to be distrubuted, run on multiple computer systems over a network.

Multithreaded. Is incorrect because JAVA is multi-threaded that is calls to subroutines as is the case with object-oriented programming.

A virus is a program that can replicate itself on a system but not necessarily spread itself by network connections.