Cisco 200-201 - Understanding Cisco Cybersecurity Operations Fundamentals (CBROPS)

When analyzing Wireshark traffic for potential attacks, an engineer should look for patterns that indicate abnormal behavior, such as:

Excessive Requests: A high number of requests over a short period could suggest an attempt to overwhelm the server, known as an HTTP flood.

Status Codes: Repeated 403 Forbidden responses may indicate that the server is rejecting requests due to a security rule being triggered.

Request Types: A mix of GET and POST requests could be used in various attack scenarios, including bandwidth flooding or cache bypassing.

The /var/log/auth.log file contains information about authentication and authorization events on a Linux system, such as successful and failed logins, sudo commands, and SSH sessions. The output in the exhibit shows a failed login attempt from a user named “root” using SSH. References: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/ise/2-4/admin_guide/b_ise_admin_guide_24/b_ise_admin_guide_24_new_chapter_01101.html

The exhibit shows a network diagram with a switch, a router, and two hosts. The switch has a MAC address table that maps the MAC addresses of the connected devices to the corresponding ports. A MAC flooding attack is a type of attack that aims to overload the switch’s MAC address table by sending a large number of frames with spoofed source MAC addresses. This causes the switch to enter a fail-open mode, where it broadcasts all incoming frames to all ports, effectively turning it into a hub. This allows the attacker tosniff the traffic between the hosts and the router, or launch other attacks such as ARP spoofing or man-in-the-middle

X.509 certificates are used in conjunction with secure data transfer protocols to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of communication. They are part of a public keyinfrastructure (PKI) that authenticates the identity of entities and encrypts data in transit. References: Implementing X.509 certificates along with secure data transfer protocols like SFTP, HTTPS, FTPS, and IPSec can help secure data sharing with third-party companies

In cybersecurity, a threat is any potential malicious attack or event that can harm an organization, while a risk is the potential damage or loss that could occur if a threat exploits a vulnerability. Therefore, risk is considered the intersection of threats and vulnerabilities, representing the likelihood and impact of a threat materializing.

Protected data refers to any information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context. In the scenario described, the engineer must identify data that is considered protected under privacy laws and regulations. Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and Protected Health Information (PHI) are two types of data that are considered protected. PII includes any data that could potentially identify a specific individual, such as addresses and gender. PHI refers to any information about health status, provision of health care, or payment for health care that can be linked to an individual. This is what makes both PII and PHI crucial to be identified and protected in compliance with data protection regulations.

Digital certificates are essential for decrypting ingress and egress perimeter traffic, as they provide the necessary encryption keys for secure communications. By using digital certificates, network security devices can inspect the decrypted traffic to detect any malicious outbound communications that may indicate command-and-control activity.

The Nmap scan results show that several ports, including ftp (21/tcp), ssh (22/tcp), telnet (23/tcp), smtp (25/tcp), and http (80/tcp), are listed as “filtered”. This typically indicatesthat a firewall is filtering the traffic to these ports, making it impossible to determine whether they are open without further investigation. However, the question specifically asks about SMB ports, which are not shown in the provided Nmap scan results. Therefore, based on the information given, we cannot confirm that the attacker identified open SMB ports on the server. The correct answer would require additional evidence not present in the scan results. References := Understanding Cisco Cybersecurity Operations Fundamentals (CBROPS) course materials and official Cisco documentation provide insights into interpreting Nmap scan results and identifying port states. These resources can be found at the Cisco Learning Network Store and Cisco’s official training and certifications webpage