Pass the ECCouncil CEH v13 312-50v13 Questions and answers with CertsForce

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

The “weakest link” in cybersecurity is almost always the human element. Even with cutting-edge technology and airtight configurations, untrained or careless users can fall for phishing attacks, use weak passwords, or mishandle sensitive data — giving hackers a path into the system.

From CEH v13 Courseware:

Module 7: Social Engineering

Topic: Human Element in Security Breaches

According to CEH v13 Security Operations and Incident Response, the first step in incident handling is identification and analysis, not immediate containment or remediation. The observed sequence—failed logins followed by abnormal outbound traffic—suggests a potential compromise, but the exact nature, scope, and impact are still unknown.

Option C aligns precisely with CEH v13’s incident response lifecycle. Real-time monitoring and detailed log analysis allow the analyst to determine whether the activity represents credential stuffing, brute-force compromise, malware-based exfiltration, or a false positive. This step preserves evidence, establishes timelines, and helps identify indicators of compromise (IOCs).

Immediately disconnecting the server (Option B) may be necessary later, but doing so prematurely can destroy volatile forensic evidence, disrupt business operations, and alert the attacker. Auditing outbound traffic alone (Option A) is too narrow and skips proper correlation of authentication logs, system logs, and process activity. Forcing credential changes (Option D) without understanding the attack vector may fail to stop malware-based persistence.

CEH v13 emphasizes that containment actions must be informed by analysis, otherwise organizations risk responding to symptoms rather than root causes. Therefore, the correct initial action is to observe, analyze, and identify, making Option C the correct answer.

Social engineering is the term used for a broad range of malicious activities accomplished through human interactions. It uses psychological manipulation to trick users into making security mistakes or giving away sensitive information.

Social engineering attacks typically involve some form of psychological manipulation, fooling otherwise unsuspecting users or employees into handing over confidential or sensitive data. Commonly, social engineering involves email or other communication that invokes urgency, fear, or similar emotions in the victim, leading the victim to promptly reveal sensitive information, click a malicious link, or open a malicious file. Because social engineering involves a human element, preventing these attacks can be tricky for enterprises.

Ransomware encrypts user data and extorts payment for restoration. CEH covers ransomware as a major threat in system hacking, highlighting encryption-based extortion as its defining behavior.

snmp-check (snmp_enum Module) is the best tool to help the ethical hacker to get the information without directly modifying any parameters within the SNMP agent’s MIB. snmp-check is a tool that allows the user to enumerate SNMP devices and extract information from them. It can gather a wide array of information about the target, such as system information, network interfaces, routing tables, ARP cache, installed software, running processes, TCP and UDP services, user accounts, and more. snmp-check can also perform brute force attacks to discover the SNMP community strings, which are the passwords used to access the SNMP agent. snmp-check is available as a standalone tool or as a module (snmp_enum) within the Metasploit framework.

The other options are not as effective or suitable as snmp-check for the ethical hacker’s task. Nmap is a network scanning and enumeration tool that can perform various types of scans and probes on the target. It can also run scripts to perform specific tasks, such as retrieving SNMP information. However, Nmap may not be able to gather as much information as snmp-check, and it may also trigger alerts or blocks from firewalls or intrusion detection systems. Oputils is a network monitoring and management toolset that can perform various functions, such as device discovery, configuration backup, bandwidth monitoring, IP address management, and more. However, Oputils is mainly designed for device management and not SNMP enumeration, and it may not be able to extract valuable network information from the SNMP agent. SnmpWalk is a tool that allows the user to retrieve the entire MIB tree of an SNMP agent by using SNMP GETNEXT requests. However, SnmpWalk is not suitable for the ethical hacker’s task, because it requires the user to change an OID (object identifier) to a different value, which may modify the parameters within the SNMP agent’s MIB and affect its functionality or security. References:

snmp-check - The SNMP enumerator

SNMP Enumeration | Ethical Hacking - GreyCampus

SNMP Enumeration - GeeksforGeeks

Nmap - the Network Mapper - Free Security Scanner

OpUtils - Network Monitoring & Management Toolset

SnmpWalk - SNMP MIB Browser

https://www.infocyte.com/blog/2019/02/16/cybersecurity-101-what-you-need-to-know-about-false-positives-and-false-negatives/

False positives are mislabeled security alerts, indicating there is a threat when in actuality, there isn’t. These false/non-malicious alerts (SIEM events) increase noise for already over-worked security teams and can include software bugs, poorly written software, or unrecognized network traffic.

False negatives are uncaught cyber threats — overlooked by security tooling because they’re dormant, highly sophisticated (i.e. file-less or capable of lateral movement) or the security infrastructure in place lacks the technological ability to detect these attacks.

This is a textbook case of Intranet DNS Poisoning, often combined with ARP spoofing, as described in CEH v13 Network Sniffing and MITM Attacks. The attacker positions themselves inside the local network, intercepts DNS requests, and responds faster than the legitimate DNS server.

ARP spoofing enables the attacker to perform a Man-in-the-Middle attack, allowing sniffing and modification of DNS traffic. CEH v13 notes that faster rogue responses are a strong indicator of local DNS poisoning.

There is no single, standardized classification of cross-site scripting flaws, but most experts distinguish between at least two primary flavors of XSS flaws: non-persistent and persistent. In this issue, we consider the non-persistent cross-site scripting vulnerability.

The non-persistent (or reflected) cross-site scripting vulnerability is by far the most basic type of web vulnerability. These holes show up when the data provided by a web client, most commonly in HTTP query parameters (e.g. HTML form submission), is used immediately by server-side scripts to parse and display a page of results for and to that user, without properly sanitizing the content.

Because HTML documents have a flat, serial structure that mixes control statements, formatting, and the actual content, any non-validated user-supplied data included in the resulting page without proper HTML encoding, may lead to markup injection. A classic example of a potential vector is a site search engine: if one searches for a string, the search string will typically be redisplayed verbatim on the result page to indicate what was searched for. If this response does not properly escape or reject HTML control characters, a cross-site scripting flaw will ensue.

DNS hijacking occurs when attackers manipulate DNS responses to redirect traffic to malicious servers. CEH v13 clearly identifies DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) as the primary defense against such attacks.

DNSSEC adds cryptographic signatures to DNS records, enabling clients to verify authenticity and integrity of DNS responses. Without DNSSEC, attackers can spoof DNS responses even if servers are fully patched.

Changing IP addresses and using LAMP do not address DNS trust. Patching is essential but does not prevent DNS spoofing.

CEH v13 explicitly recommends DNSSEC for preventing cache poisoning and DNS hijacking attacks, making Option C the correct answer.

A Collision attack is a type of cryptographic attack that targets the hash function. The goal of this attack is to find two different inputs that produce the same hash output. This undermines the integrity of the hashing algorithm, as hash functions are expected to produce a unique output for each unique input.

In practical terms, if two different documents (inputs) produce the same hash value (collision), an attacker can replace a legitimate file with a malicious one without detection, assuming the system validates integrity only via the hash.

CEH v13 defines a collision attack as follows:

"A collision attack focuses on finding two different messages (M1 and M2) that produce the same hash value. This can compromise digital signatures, certificates, and other security protocols."

Reference – CEH v13 Study Guide:

Module 20: Cryptography, Section: “Hashing Algorithms and Attacks”, Subsection: “Collision Attacks”

Incorrect Options Explained:

A: Public keys are part of asymmetric encryption, not relevant to collisions.

B/C: These are incorrect descriptions; collision attacks are not about breaking hashes into parts to retrieve plaintext or private keys.

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Insecure communication is defined in CEH’s mobile and IoT security modules as the failure to encrypt sensitive data transmitted between a device and a server. When applications use plain HTTP instead of HTTPS, all traffic—including authentication tokens, user identifiers, and session data—can be monitored and altered by an attacker through network sniffing or man-in-the-middle attacks. CEH emphasizes that insecure transport channels represent one of the most common and critical weaknesses in mobile ecosystems, allowing attackers to harvest credentials or inject malicious commands. Security misconfiguration refers to improper server settings, while SSL pinning issues involve certificate validation bypassing. Insufficient input validation pertains to application-side data validation. None of these align as directly as insecure communication, which precisely describes the unencrypted data exposure.

Docker uses a client-server design. The docker client talks to the docker daemon, that will the work of building, running, and distributing your docker containers. The docker client and daemon will run on the same system, otherwise you will connect a docker consumer to a remote docker daemon. The docker consumer and daemon communicate using a REST API, over OS sockets or a network interface.

The docker daemon (dockerd) listens for docker API requests and manages docker objects like pictures, containers, networks, and volumes. A daemon may communicate with other daemons to manage docker services.

Comprehensive Explanation from CEH v13 Courseware:

CEH v13 identifies XML Signature Wrapping (XSW) attacks, also known simply as Wrapping attacks, as a major threat against SOAP-based web services. These attacks exploit weak XML parsing and insufficient validation of signed message components. SOAP messages often include digitally signed sections, but if the server validates the signature without confirming the correct position or structure of the signed elements, attackers can duplicate, move, or wrap signed content inside a modified XML envelope. This allows an attacker to inject malicious payloads while still presenting a valid signature. CEH details how this can lead to unauthorized execution, privilege escalation, or bypassing authentication controls in SOAP APIs. Cloud snooping, cryptanalysis, and IMDS abuse do not involve message duplication or signature misplacement. The scenario precisely matches CEH’s definition of a Wrapping Attack in SOAP/XML security.

http://www.carnal0wnage.com/papers/LSO-Hping2-Basics.pdf

Most ping programs use ICMP echo requests and wait for echo replies to come back to test connectivity. Hping2 allows us to do the same testing using any IP packet, including ICMP, UDP, and TCP. This can be helpful since nowadays most firewalls or routers block ICMP. Hping2, by default, will use TCP, but, if you still want to send an ICMP scan, you can. We send ICMP scans using the -1 (one) mode. Basically the syntax will be hping2 -1 IPADDRESS

[root@localhost hping2-rc3]# hping2 -1 192.168.0.100

HPING 192.168.0.100 (eth0 192.168.0.100): icmp mode set, 28 headers + 0 data bytes

len=46 ip=192.168.0.100 ttl=128 id=27118 icmp_seq=0 rtt=14.9 ms

len=46 ip=192.168.0.100 ttl=128 id=27119 icmp_seq=1 rtt=0.5 ms

len=46 ip=192.168.0.100 ttl=128 id=27120 icmp_seq=2 rtt=0.5 ms

len=46 ip=192.168.0.100 ttl=128 id=27121 icmp_seq=3 rtt=1.5 ms

len=46 ip=192.168.0.100 ttl=128 id=27122 icmp_seq=4 rtt=0.9 ms

— 192.168.0.100 hping statistic —

5 packets tramitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max = 0.5/3.7/14.9 ms

[root@localhost hping2-rc3]#

A NULL scan is a type of TCP scan where no TCP flags are set in the packet. This unconventional packet is used to evade firewalls and intrusion detection systems and to determine the state of a port based on the response.

Behavior:

Open port → No response

Closed port → RST (Reset)

From CEH v13 Courseware:

Module 3: Scanning Networks

Topic: TCP Flag Scanning Methods

CEH v13 Study Guide states:

“A NULL scan sends a TCP packet with all flags turned off. The system’s response (or lack thereof) allows the attacker to infer whether a port is open or closed, especially on UNIX-based systems.”

Incorrect Options:

B: Vague and inaccurate

C: Refers to Xmas scan (URG, PSH, FIN)

D/E: Irrelevant to TCP flags

The Mirai malware primarily targets Internet of Things (IoT) devices with weak or default credentials. Once infected, these devices become part of a botnet that the attacker controls remotely. The primary use of Mirai botnets is to perform Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

DDoS attacks flood a target (server, application, or network) with massive traffic, overwhelming resources and causing service outages.

Mirai gained infamy after being used in large-scale DDoS attacks, including against DNS provider Dyn, which caused widespread internet outages.

Incorrect Options:

A. MITM attacks involve intercepting communications.

B. Birthday attacks are cryptographic hash collision techniques.

D. Password attacks refer to credential brute-forcing; although Mirai uses default credentials, its main attack vector is DDoS.

Reference – CEH v13 Official Courseware:

Module 18: IoT and OT Hacking

Section: “IoT Malware”

Subsection: “Mirai Botnet and Real-World Attacks”

CEH Engage: IoT Botnet Simulation

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In CEH v13 Module 02: Footprinting and Reconnaissance, the OSINT Framework is introduced as a collection of free, open-source tools and resources to aid ethical hackers in passive reconnaissance.

Key Features of OSINT Framework:

Web-based visual tool that maps out links to open-source intelligence tools.

Allows collection of emails, domains, usernames, IPs, social media data, and more.

Focuses on passive footprinting to avoid detection.

Option Clarification:

A. WebSploit Framework: Used for man-in-the-middle attacks and web vulnerabilities.

B. Browser Exploitation Framework (BeEF): Browser-focused attack tool.

C. OSINT Framework: Correct — open-source intelligence and reconnaissance.

D. SpeedPhish Framework: Phishing simulation tool, not used for passive information gathering.

In CEH v13 Module 11: Hacking Wireless Networks, WPA3-Personal is discussed as the latest wireless encryption standard designed to address the weaknesses of WPA2, particularly PSK brute-force vulnerabilities.

Key Features of WPA3-Personal:

Replaces the pre-shared key (PSK) with Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE), also known as the Dragonfly Key Exchange.

SAE performs a zero-knowledge proof which makes it resistant to offline dictionary attacks.

Even if attackers capture the handshake, they cannot use it to brute-force passwords offline.

Option Clarification:

A. WPA3-Personal: Correct – uses SAE instead of PSK.

B. WPA2-Enterprise: Uses 802.1X, not related to SAE.

C. Bluetooth: Wireless protocol but unrelated to SAE or WPA.

D. ZigBee: IoT protocol; unrelated to Wi-Fi security protocols.

Tautology-based SQL injection tests, such as using ' OR '1'='1, are safe and effective methods to verify whether SQL queries are being manipulated by user input. CEH emphasizes avoiding destructive queries and using logical expressions that return all rows if injection is successful.

The Blackjacking attack involves leveraging a compromised BlackBerry device and its connection through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) to tunnel back into the internal corporate network, bypassing perimeter firewalls. The tool used in this method is BBProxy.

BBProxy is installed on the BlackBerry device and establishes a covert tunnel via BES, allowing attackers to pivot into the internal LAN from outside the perimeter.

Reference – CEH v13 Official Study Guide:

Module 17: Hacking Mobile Platforms

Quote:

“Blackjacking is a technique in which attackers use BBProxy to exploit a trusted path from a BlackBerry device to the corporate LAN through BES.”

Incorrect Options Explained:

A. Paros Proxy is a web proxy used for intercepting HTTP/S traffic.

C. Blooover is used for Bluetooth security auditing.

D. BBCrack is used for password recovery on BlackBerry devices, not for tunneling.

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