CPENT Practice Test 6 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A penetration tester is analyzing a proprietary IoT device protocol that operates over UDP. The tester has captured raw binary network traffic and wants to write a custom dissector script to parse the packet structure in Wireshark. What scripting language does Wireshark natively support for writing lightweight protocol dissectors?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Lua. Wireshark supports Lua natively for writing post-dissection scripts, custom dissectors, and heuristic analyzers without needing to recompile the source code in C.

Answer

Bash

Answer

PowerShell

Answer

Ruby

Question 2

A security researcher is performing dynamic analysis of an IoT firmware binary inside an emulated MIPS environment using QEMU-user mode. When executing the binary, the application crashes with a segmentation fault due to missing dynamic library dependencies in the emulated root directory. Which environment variable must be exported to instruct QEMU where to search for the target root filesystem's shared libraries?

Accepted Answer

QEMU_LD_PREFIX. When running binaries under QEMU user-mode emulation, the QEMU_LD_PREFIX environment variable specifies the path to the root directory containing the target architecture's libraries.

Answer

QEMU_ROOTFS

Answer

LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Answer

PATH

Question 3

During an Azure subscription review, a security assessor checks for role-based access control and resource configuration best practices. Which TWO of the following findings represent high-severity security risks? (Choose TWO)

Accepted Answer

Assigning the Owner role to external guest users at the root management group level without justification.. Option B is correct because assigning the Owner role to external guest users at the root management group level grants them full control over every subscription and resource in the tenant, violating least-privilege and creating a severe privilege-escalation and data-exfiltration risk. Option E is correct because long-lived, unchanged storage account access keys with broad data access effectively act as permanent shared secrets; if leaked, they allow full access to the storage account's data, and key rotation is a core configuration best practice. Option A is not a risk but a recommended defense, since Azure Defender for SQL provides threat detection and vulnerability assessment for Azure SQL databases. Option C is not a risk because Azure Monitor alerts on failed sign-in attempts improve detection of brute-force or credential-stuffing activity. Option D is not a risk because soft-delete and purge protection on Azure Key Vaults are recommended safeguards that prevent accidental or malicious permanent deletion of secrets, keys, and certificates.

Answer

Enabling Azure Defender for SQL on all Azure SQL databases.

Answer

Configuring Azure Monitor alerts for failed sign-in attempts.

Answer

Enabling soft-delete and purge protection on Azure Key Vaults.

Question 4

An internal penetration tester needs to scan a local subnet for live hosts quickly and quietly without sending TCP or UDP port traffic. Which TWO methods rely on network layer protocols other than TCP port scanning for host discovery? (Choose TWO)

Accepted Answer

ARP ping discovery (-PR). Option D, ARP ping discovery (-PR), is correct because Nmap's ARP scan operates at the data link/network layer by broadcasting ARP requests ("who has this IP?") and identifying live hosts from ARP replies, without generating any TCP or UDP port traffic, making it fast and quiet on a local subnet. Option E, ICMP Echo request ping (-PE), is correct because it uses the network-layer ICMP protocol (type 8 Echo Request, expecting type 0 Echo Reply) to determine host liveness, again without sending TCP or UDP port probes. Option A, TCP Connect scan (-sT), is wrong because it completes full TCP three-way handshakes to target ports, which is exactly the TCP port traffic the tester must avoid. Option B, TCP SYN port scan (-sS), is wrong because it sends TCP SYN packets to ports (half-open scanning), still TCP port traffic. Option C, UDP port scan (-sU), is wrong because it sends UDP datagrams to target ports, which is UDP port traffic and also slow and noisy.

Answer

TCP Connect scan (-sT)

Answer

TCP SYN port scan (-sS)

Answer

UDP port scan (-sU)

Question 5

Which Active Directory right or permission allows a security principal to perform a DCSync attack, thereby replicating domain secrets?

Accepted Answer

DS-Replication-Get-Changes and DS-Replication-Get-Changes-All. DCSync abuses the Directory Replication Service (DRS) Remote Protocol by impersonating a domain controller and requesting replication of directory changes. The specific rights required are the extended rights DS-Replication-Get-Changes and DS-Replication-Get-Changes-All (GUIDs 1131f6aa-9c07-11d1-f79f-00c04fc2dcd2 and 1131f6ad-9c07-11d1-f79f-00c04fc2dcd2), typically granted to Domain Admins, Enterprise Admins, and the DC computer accounts themselves.

Answer

GenericAll over thekrbtgt account

Answer

FullControl over the Domain Controllers OU

Answer

WriteDACL on the builtin Administrators group

Question 6

A penetration tester needs to perform a stealthy TCP SYN scan against a target network using Nmap to avoid triggering simple stateless packet filters. Which command-line flag should be used?

Accepted Answer

-sS. The -sS flag tells Nmap to perform a TCP SYN scan, which sends a SYN packet and waits for a SYN-ACK response, never completing the full 3-way handshake, thus remaining stealthier.

Answer

-sA

Answer

-sU

Answer

-sT

Question 7

You are auditing a perimeter network protected by an Intrusion Detection System (IDS). To bypass signature-based detection mechanisms that look for standard Nmap packet patterns, you decide to fragment outgoing TCP packets into tiny 8-byte blocks. Which Nmap argument accomplishes this packet fragmentation?

Accepted Answer

-f. The -f option causes Nmap to split the IP packets into tiny fragments. Specifying it twice (-ff) sends 16-byte fragments instead of 8-byte fragments.

Answer

--mtu

Answer

--data-length

Answer

-D

Question 8

You are hardening and analyzing network perimeter defenses against advanced evasion techniques. Which TWO of the following Nmap features or scan modifications are specifically designed to evade packet inspection filters by altering packet headers or timing parameters?

Accepted Answer

Using the -D option to launch a decoy scan with multiple fake source IP addresses. Option B is correct because Nmap's -D (decoy) option injects multiple spoofed source IP addresses into the scan, so packet inspection filters and IDS/IPS sensors see traffic from many apparent senders and cannot easily attribute or block the real scanning host. Option E is correct because --source-port (or -g) sets the TCP/UDP source port to a chosen value such as 53 (DNS) or 20 (FTP-data), which can slip past poorly written firewall or ACL rules that trust traffic originating from those well-known ports. Option A is not an evasion technique; -p- simply expands the port range to all 65,535 TCP ports and affects coverage, not header or timing manipulation. Option C is not an evasion feature; --script runs NSE scripts for discovery or vulnerability detection against open ports. Option D is not an evasion feature; -oA only writes scan output in normal, XML, and Grepable formats for reporting.

Answer

Using the -p- option to scan all 65,535 TCP ports on the target host

Answer

Using the --script option to execute NSE vulnerability scripts against open ports

Answer

Using the -oA option to output scan results simultaneously in normal, XML, and Grepable formats

Question 9

An attacker is performing a man-in-the-middle attack against an industrial control network utilizing the S7comm protocol between a Siemens S7-300 PLC and an engineering station. The attacker wants to inject malicious logic into the PLC memory. Which tool can be used to craft and send malicious S7comm packets to manipulate the PLC operating mode?

Accepted Answer

Snap7 library scripts. Snap7 is an open-source Siemens S7 communication library that allows developers and testers to interact with Siemens PLCs. Wireshark is passive, Metasploit has limited industrial modules, and Scapy can craft raw packets but Snap7 is the standard library for S7comm manipulation.

Answer

Aircrack-ng

Answer

Hydra

Answer

Wireshark

Question 10

During a lateral movement assessment in an Active Directory environment, a penetration tester wants to verify if SMB signing is disabled on internal subnet hosts to assess vulnerability to NTLM relay attacks. Which TWO tools or methods can be used to identify systems with SMB signing disabled? Choose two.

Accepted Answer

nmap --script smb2-security-mode -p 445 <target_ip>. Option C is correct because the Nmap NSE script smb2-security-mode queries SMB2 on port 445 and reports the message signing configuration, explicitly showing whether signing is required or not, which directly identifies hosts vulnerable to NTLM relay. Option E is correct because CrackMapExec/NetExec's smb module enumerates SMB hosts across a subnet and reports signing status (e.g., 'signing:False') in its output, making it ideal for quickly sweeping an internal range. Option A (tracert) only maps the network path to a target via ICMP TTL expiry and reveals nothing about SMB configuration. Option B (ping -t) merely sends continuous ICMP echo requests to test reachability and cannot detect SMB signing. Option D (nslookup -type=mx) queries DNS mail exchanger records and is unrelated to SMB security settings.

Answer

tracert <target_ip>

Answer

ping -t <target_ip>

Answer

nslookup -type=mx <domain>