Test your basic knowledge |

Comptia Security +: Vocab

Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. A denial-of-service attack is an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users - typically the loss of network connectivity and services by consuming the bandwidth of the victim network or overloading the computational






2. A component in the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) protocol stack. It sits between the WTP and WDP layers in the WAP communications stack.






3. A collection of updates - fixes and/or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package.






4. An attacker spoofs the source IP in a packet header - to make a ping request appear to have originated from the future victim's network - then the responding network responds in full force to these requests and brings down the victim's network.






5. A class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. Because it cannot (easily) be written to - its main uses lie in the distribution of firmware.






6. A type of virus that changes its telltale code segments so that it ' looks' different from one infected file to another - thus making detection more difficult.






7. Once authenticated - the level of access you have to a system






8. In telecommunications - a callback occurs when the originator of a call is immediately called back in a second call as a response. This helps to make sure that only authorized people are calling in as the number dialing in has to be in the list. Howe






9. A network that uses proprietary protocols






10. Setting up the user to access the honeypot for reasons other than the intent to harm.






11. Something used to put out a fire. Can be in Classes A - B - C - D - or H






12. Computer Incident Response Team






13. The illegal practice of stealing money repeatedly in extremely small quantities - usually by taking advantage of rounding to the nearest cent (or other monetary unit) in financial transactions. Salami slicing is most often performed by employees of t






14. The process of developing a planned approach to change in an organization. Typically the objective is to maximize the collective benefits for all people involved in the change and minimize the risk of failure of implementing the change.






15. In cryptanalysis - this attack is a method of defeating a cryptographic scheme by trying a large number of possibilities; for example - exhaustively working through all possible keys in order to decrypt a message. In most schemes - the theoretical po






16. Threat to physical security.






17. A number of computer software products and specifications from Sun Microsystems that together provide a system for developing and deploying cross-platform applications. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms spanning from embedded devi






18. When a DNS server goes out to resolve a name - and gets the wrong response back - it caches the wrong address for the default DNS time period - thus poisoning the cache for that period of time






19. Trusted Computing Base. Comprised of the hardware - software - and firmware of the system.






20. False Acceptance Rate - False Rejection Rate - Crossover Error Rate






21. Also civil law






22. An arrangement in which the keys needed to decrypt encrypted data are held in escrow by a third party - so that someone else (typically government agencies) can obtain them to decrypt messages which they suspect to be relevant to national security.






23. Provides a means to obtain passwords or encryption keys and thus bypass other security measures. This can be accomplished through hardware or software means.






24. A war dialing utility






25. The act of identifying yourself. Providing your identity to a system






26. The effort made by an ordinarily prudent or reasonable party to avoid harm to another party or himself. Deals with liability.






27. In a separation of duties model - this is where code is checked in and out






28. a.k.a. The Chinese wall. Nash Bridges - Bridge wall - Chinese wall. Dynamically changes access control to prevent unauthorized access.






29. Reasonable doubt






30. 1 - 1024 are the ports registered to Internet applications. Ones on the test include: 20 - ftp 21 - ftp 22 - ssh 23 - telnet 25 - smtp 53 - dns 69 - tftp 80 - http 161 - snmp 443 - ssl






31. A birthday attack is a type of cryptographic attack which exploits the mathematics behind the birthday paradox - making use of a space-time tradeoff.






32. A card that holds information that must be authenticated to before it can reveal the information that it is holding






33. Base 64 is a positional numeral system using a base of 64. It is the largest power of two base that can be represented using only printable ASCII characters. This has led to its use as a transfer encoding for e-mail among other things.






34. Identifying risks and assessing the possible damage that can be caused in order to justify security safeguards






35. Network devices that operate at layer 3. This device separates broadcast domains.






36. Motivational tools for employee awareness to get them to report security flaws in an organization






37. In cryptanalysis and computer security - this attack is a technique for defeating a cipher or authentication mechanism by trying to determine its decryption key or passphrase by searching a large number of possibilities. In contrast with a brute forc






38. In a distributed attack - the attacking computer hosts are often zombie computers with broadband connections to the Internet that have been compromised by viruses or Trojan horse programs that allow the perpetrator to remotely control the machine and






39. This factor represents a measure of the magnitude of loss or impact on the value of an asset.






40. Demilitarized Zone. A part of the network that is neither part of the internal network nor directly part of the Internet. Basically a network sitting between two networks.






41. The intercepting of conversations by unintended recipients






42. Virtual memory is an area of 'memory' that is not in physical memory (RAM) but on the disk system to allow for extra 'memory' processing area above what is available through RAM. This is the pagefile.sys file on a Windows system. Many Windows OSs req






43. 0 = striping without parity 1 = mirroring 3 = striping with parity (parity on single drive) 5 = striping with parity (parity striped across all drives)






44. In a computer system (or cryptosystem or algorithm) these are methods of bypassing normal authentication or securing remote access to a computer - while attempting to remain hidden from casual inspection.






45. The person that determines the permissions to files. The data owner.






46. In computer security - this type of attack is a situation in which one person or program successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gains an illegitimate advantage.






47. Disclosure - Alteration - Destruction. These things break the CIA triad






48. Also known as a tunnel)






49. Making individuals accountable for their actions on a system typically through the use of auditing






50. Closed Circuit Television