Pass the ECCouncil ECIH 212-89 Questions and answers with CertsForce

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (ECIH-aligned):

The ECIH Risk Assessment and Recovery module stresses that recovery must not reintroduce threats. When backups may be compromised, validating their integrity is critical.

Option A is correct because scanning backups with updated signatures and heuristic analysis ensures that latent malware is detected before restoration. ECIH emphasizes that restoring infected backups can trigger reinfection and negate eradication efforts.

Option D is excessive and disruptive. Option B is a containment control, not a recovery safeguard. Option C risks reintroducing compromised data.

Therefore, validating backups before restoration is the priority recovery action.

Farheen's activity of using the DD tool to create a sector-by-sector mirror image of the original disk is an example of system preservation. This process is crucial in digital forensics for creating an exact copy of a storage device to ensure that the original data remains unchanged during the investigation. By making a forensic duplication, or image, of the disk, Farheen ensures that the static data on the disk is preserved in its current state for thorough analysis, without altering the original evidence. This step allows investigators to work with a precise replica of the data, protecting the integrity of the original evidence.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (ECIH-aligned):

This scenario describes a SYN flood attack, a classic protocol-level Denial-of-Service technique covered in the ECIH Network Security Incidents module. In a SYN flood, attackers send a large volume of TCP SYN packets but never complete the three-way handshake, leaving the server waiting for responses and exhausting connection resources.

Option D is correct because incomplete TCP handshakes, half-open connections, and resource exhaustion are defining characteristics of SYN flood attacks. The presence of multiple source IPs further suggests a distributed attack.

Option A involves taking over an existing session, not exhausting resources. Option B applies to UDP-based amplification attacks. Option C affects DNS resolution, not TCP handshakes.

ECIH stresses that early identification of SYN floods allows defenders to deploy SYN cookies, rate limiting, and upstream filtering. Recognizing handshake anomalies is therefore critical in protecting service availability.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (ECIH-aligned):

The ECIH Introduction to Incident Handling module identifies social engineering as a primary method attackers use to gain unauthorized access without exploiting technical vulnerabilities.

Option C is correct because the attack relied on deception—spoofed notifications and lookalike domains—to trick users into disclosing credentials. This is a classic social engineering technique, often used as the initial access vector.

Options A, B, and D are technical reconnaissance or network attacks, not human-focused deception.

Recognizing social engineering as the root cause is essential for selecting appropriate remediation actions such as user awareness training, phishing defenses, and MFA, all emphasized in ECIH guidance.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (ECIH-aligned):

This scenario involves a session fixation vulnerability, a well-known web application attack where an attacker forces or predicts a session identifier and then tricks a user into authenticating with that session. According to the ECIH web application security module, proper session management is essential to prevent such attacks.

Option B is correct because rotating or regenerating session tokens immediately after successful authentication ensures that any session identifier known to an attacker becomes invalid. This breaks the attack chain inherent in session fixation attacks. ECIH explicitly identifies session regeneration as a primary mitigation control.

Option A helps against automated abuse but does not address session reuse. Option C strengthens authentication but does not prevent session hijacking. Option D improves confidentiality but does not prevent fixation if the same session ID remains valid.

ECIH stresses that authentication and session management must be treated as distinct security controls. Even strong passwords cannot protect against flawed session handling. Therefore, regenerating session tokens post-login is the correct and most effective remediation.

Leaving sensitive business details over voicemail or sending them out through email broadcast messages is not a best practice for security. This approach significantly increases the risk of information leakage and unauthorized access to critical business information. Such practices can be exploited by insiders to conduct malicious activities, including data theft, fraud, or sabotage. The best practices for mitigating insider threats involve implementing strict access controls, monitoring and auditing employee actions, securing communications, and ensuring that sensitive information is only shared through secure and authorized channels. Encouraging or allowing the practice of leaving sensitive business details in such insecure manners contradicts the principles of information security and increases the vulnerability to insider attacks.

MxToolbox is a comprehensive tool designed for analyzing email headers and diagnosing various email delivery issues. When Francis received a spoofed email asking for his bank information, using MxToolbox to analyze the email headers would be appropriate. This tool helps in examining the source of the email, tracking the email's path across the internet from the sender to the receiver, and identifying any signs of email spoofing or malicious activity. It provides detailed information about the email servers encountered along the way and can help in verifying the authenticity of the email sender. Other options like EventLog Analyzer, Email Checker, and PoliteMail are tools used for different purposes such as analyzing system event logs, checking email address validity, and managing email communications, respectively, and do not specifically focus on analyzing email headers to the extent required for investigating a spoofed email incident.

User Behavior Analytics (UBA) is a cybersecurity process or tool that utilizes machine learning, algorithms, and statistical analyses to detect potentially harmful activities within an organization's network by comparing them against established patterns of users' behavior. It is particularly effective in identifying malicious internal actors or compromised users who may be conducting activities that deviate from their normal behavior patterns, such as accessing unauthorized data or systems, excessive file downloads, or unusual login times. UBA tools can flag these activities for further investigation, often before traditional security tools detect a breach. In contrast, SOC2 compliance reports, log forwarding, and syslog configuration are important for maintaining and auditing security standards and for infrastructure monitoring, but they are not primarily focused on detecting malicious behavior based on deviations from established user behavior patterns.

Reducing the success rate of SQL injection attacks is focused on minimizing vulnerabilities within the application's database interactions, rather than the broader server or network services. SQL injection prevention techniques typically involve input validation, parameterized queries, and the use of stored procedures, rather than changes to the network or server configuration.

A) Closing unnecessary application services and ports on the server is a general security best practice to reduce the attack surface but does not directly impact the success rate of SQL injection attacks. This action limits access to potential vulnerabilities across the network and server but doesn't address the specific ways SQL injection exploits input handling within web applications.

B) Automatically locking a user account after a predefined number of invalid login attempts within a predefined interval can help mitigate brute force attacks but has no direct effect on preventing SQL injection, which exploits code vulnerabilities to manipulate database queries.

C) Constraining legitimate characters to exclude special characters and D) Limiting the length of the input field are both direct methods to reduce the risk of SQL injection. They focus on controlling user input, which is the vector through which SQL injection attacks are launched. By restricting special characters that could be used in SQL commands and limiting input lengths, an application can reduce the potential for malicious input to form a part of SQL queries executed by the backend database.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (ECIH-aligned):

The ECIH Email Security Incident Handling module emphasizes email header analysis as a primary method for identifying spoofed or malicious emails. One of the most critical header elements is the originating IP address, which reveals where the email actually came from.

Option D is correct because tracing the originating IP and validating it through WHOIS provided definitive evidence that the email did not originate from a legitimate organizational source. This technique allows responders to distinguish between legitimate executive communications and impersonation attempts.

Option A is reactive and unreliable. Option B provides detection context but not attribution. Option C validates domain authentication but does not always reveal spoofing when credentials are compromised.

ECIH highlights that IP tracing combined with WHOIS analysis is a powerful verification method during executive impersonation investigations, making Option D correct.