Threat Detection and Incident Response

A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application processes sensitive customer data. The Security team has enabled VPC Flow Logs, CloudTrail, and GuardDuty. Recently, the team received a GuardDuty finding indicating a potential SSH brute force attack originating from an external IP address 203.0.113.50 targeting one of the EC2 instances. The Security Engineer needs to automatically isolate the affected instance and capture forensic evidence for analysis. The company has strict requirements: the instance must be isolated immediately, and a snapshot of the EBS volume must be taken before any remediation actions are taken. The instance is part of an Auto Scaling group, and the Security Engineer wants to minimize manual intervention. The Security Engineer has access to AWS Systems Manager and AWS Lambda. Which combination of steps should the Security Engineer implement to meet the requirements?

A security engineer is reviewing a CloudTrail log entry (exhibit). What is the most immediate security concern indicated by this event?

A security team wants to detect unauthorized API calls in real time and automatically block the source IP address using network ACLs. Which AWS service should be used for detection?

Which TWO AWS services can be used to detect anomalous API activity in an AWS account? (Choose two.)

A company has a security rule that all S3 buckets must have server access logging enabled. A security engineer uses AWS Config to evaluate compliance. The engineer configures a managed rule but notices that the rule does not evaluate all buckets. What is the most likely reason?

A security engineer is investigating a potential data exfiltration from an S3 bucket that is configured to allow public access. The engineer wants to determine who accessed the bucket and from which IP addresses. Which AWS capability should be used?

During an incident response, a security engineer needs to capture a memory image of a compromised Amazon EC2 instance running Linux. The instance is in a production Auto Scaling group. Which approach is BEST?

Which TWO actions are best practices for securing an AWS account's root user? (Choose 2.)

Drag and drop the steps to implement a secure CI/CD pipeline with AWS CodePipeline and IAM in the correct order.

A security engineer discovers an Amazon GuardDuty finding of type 'UnauthorizedAccess:EC2/SSHBruteForce' for an EC2 instance. The instance is part of an Auto Scaling group and has a public IP address. What is the MOST effective immediate step to mitigate the threat?

A company has a security requirement to automatically isolate an Amazon EC2 instance that is generating high network traffic to a known malicious IP address. The company uses Amazon GuardDuty and AWS Lambda. Which combination of services and configurations should be used to achieve the isolation?

During a security review, a security engineer notices that an S3 bucket contains sensitive data but has a bucket policy that allows access from any principal in the account. The engineer needs to identify any unintended cross-account access to this bucket. Which AWS service should be used?

A security engineer notices that an EC2 instance is sending outbound traffic to a known malicious IP address. The engineer needs to immediately block the traffic and capture a packet capture for forensic analysis. Which combination of actions should the engineer take?

A security engineer is configuring automated response to a specific GuardDuty finding type. The engineer wants to automatically block the offending IP address in the security group when a finding is generated. Which TWO AWS services should the engineer use together to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)

A security engineer finds this IAM policy attached to a user. The user is able to create CloudTrail trails but cannot start logging. What is the MOST likely reason?

A company uses a multi-account AWS Organizations setup with hundreds of accounts. The security team uses AWS Security Hub in the management account to aggregate findings from all accounts. They have configured Amazon GuardDuty in all accounts and enabled AWS Config with recording. Recently, they noticed that Security Hub is not displaying any findings from GuardDuty in member accounts, even though GuardDuty is generating sample findings. The security team has verified that the Security Hub integration with GuardDuty is enabled in the management account. What is the most likely reason for the missing findings?

During an incident response, a security engineer needs to preserve the state of an EC2 instance for forensic analysis. The instance is running a production workload that cannot be interrupted. Which of the following actions should the engineer take FIRST to ensure data integrity?

Which THREE actions should be taken when preserving forensic evidence from an EC2 instance during an incident? (Select THREE.)

A company's security policy requires that all S3 buckets be encrypted at rest. An security engineer needs to detect any S3 bucket that does not have default encryption enabled. Which AWS service should the engineer use to continuously monitor and alert on non-compliant buckets?

During incident response, a security engineer needs to preserve the state of a running EC2 instance for forensic analysis without losing volatile data. The instance is in an Auto Scaling group. Which action should the engineer take FIRST?

A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to centrally collect and analyze CloudTrail logs from all accounts in a single S3 bucket. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?

A security engineer is investigating a potential data exfiltration incident. The engineer notices that an EC2 instance with an attached IAM role has been making API calls to an S3 bucket in another AWS account. The engineer wants to identify the source of the API calls and determine if the calls are malicious. Which AWS service should the engineer use to view the API calls made by the IAM role?

A company runs a web application on an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application stores user session data in an ElastiCache Redis cluster. The security team receives an alert from GuardDuty that one of the EC2 instances is communicating with a known command-and-control (C2) IP address. The instance ID is i-0a1b2c3d4e5f. The security engineer needs to contain the threat immediately while preserving the instance for forensic analysis. Which course of action should the security engineer take?

A security engineer is configuring AWS CloudWatch Logs to monitor for suspicious activity. They want to create a metric filter that detects when an IAM user calls the `iam:CreateAccessKey` API. The engineer writes the following filter pattern: `{ ($.eventName = "CreateAccessKey") }`. After testing, the filter does not trigger. What is the most likely reason?

A security engineer notices that an EC2 instance is sending outbound traffic to a known malicious IP address. The instance is part of an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. The engineer needs to immediately stop the exfiltration while preserving forensic evidence. What is the BEST course of action?

During an incident response, a security engineer needs to preserve the state of an EC2 instance's root volume for forensic analysis. The instance is still running. Which action should be taken to ensure the data is preserved without altering it?

A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls. During an incident investigation, the security team needs to identify who deleted an S3 bucket. CloudTrail logs are stored in a centralized S3 bucket with server-side encryption using AWS KMS. Which additional step is required to ensure the CloudTrail logs can be queried quickly for this investigation?

A security engineer notices that an IAM role used by an EC2 instance is generating a large number of API calls to an S3 bucket that is not part of the company's account. Which AWS service should be used to detect and alert on this suspicious activity?

Which TWO steps should a security engineer take when responding to a confirmed security incident involving a compromised EC2 instance? (Choose 2.)

A company uses Amazon GuardDuty and receives a finding of type 'Backdoor:EC2/C&CActivity.B!DNS' for an EC2 instance. What does this finding indicate?

A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in a VPC. The security team uses Amazon GuardDuty and has enabled Amazon Detective. Recently, GuardDuty raised a 'Recon:EC2/PortProbeUnprotectedPort' finding for one of the instances. The security engineer verified that the ALB security group only allows inbound HTTP/HTTPS from the internet. However, the finding indicates that the instance is receiving probes on port 22 (SSH). Further investigation with Detective shows that the probes originate from multiple IP addresses and are reaching the instance's private IP address. The engineer suspects that the SSH port is exposed despite the security group configuration. What is the MOST likely cause of this exposure?

A company uses Amazon Detective to investigate security findings. The security team is analyzing a GuardDuty finding of type 'Backdoor:EC2/C&CActivity.B!DNS' for an EC2 instance. The team wants to use Detective to understand the full scope of the incident, including which other resources the instance communicated with and any IAM roles used. However, when the team opens the finding in Detective, they see no network activity data for the instance. The instance is in a VPC with VPC Flow Logs enabled, and Flow Logs are being published to CloudWatch Logs. What should the team do to enable Detective to display the network activity?

A security engineer is investigating a potential data exfiltration from an S3 bucket. Which AWS service should be used to analyze the VPC Flow Logs for the S3 bucket's endpoint?

A security engineer needs to ensure that all API calls in an AWS account are logged for incident response. Which AWS service should be enabled?

A company's security team is implementing an incident response plan for a potential ransomware attack on their EC2 instances. Which THREE steps should the team take to preserve forensic evidence while containing the incident?

A security analyst needs to detect and alert on suspicious API calls in real time. Which combination of AWS services should be used?

During an incident response, a security engineer needs to capture a forensic image of an EC2 instance's root volume for analysis. The instance is running and cannot be stopped. What is the recommended approach to capture the volume without stopping the instance?

A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API activity. The security team wants to ensure that any changes to CloudTrail configuration (e.g., disabling the trail, deleting the trail, modifying the log delivery) are detected immediately. They have created a CloudWatch Events rule to capture the event 'StopLogging' and send an SNS notification. During testing, the team stops the trail and does not receive the notification. The CloudWatch Events rule is configured with the correct event pattern. What should the team check?

Which AWS service can be used to detect and alert on suspicious network traffic patterns within a VPC, such as port scanning or unusual outbound traffic?

A security engineer needs to detect and respond to potential credential theft where an IAM user's access key is being used from an unusual geographic location. Which AWS service should be used to generate alerts based on this anomaly?

An organization uses AWS Organizations and wants to centrally manage Amazon GuardDuty across multiple accounts. What is the correct architecture?

A security engineer is configuring automated response to a GuardDuty finding of type 'UnauthorizedAccess:EC2/SSHBruteForce'. The engineer needs to isolate the compromised instance by modifying the security group to deny all inbound traffic. Which AWS service should be used to orchestrate this response?

A security team needs to analyze historical CloudTrail logs across multiple AWS accounts to detect patterns of suspicious activity. Which solution provides the MOST cost-effective and scalable analysis?

A company is using AWS WAF to protect a web application. The security team wants to receive alerts when a specific rule block is triggered. Which AWS service should they use to achieve this?

A security engineer is investigating a potential compromise of an EC2 instance. The engineer wants to capture memory and disk forensics without shutting down the instance. Which service should the engineer use?

A company has enabled AWS CloudTrail and wants to receive real-time notifications when specific API calls, such as DeleteTrail, are made. Which service should be used to trigger an alert based on CloudTrail log events?

A company has an incident response (IR) process that includes isolating compromised EC2 instances. During a security incident, the IR team needs to block all traffic to and from a compromised instance while preserving the instance for forensic analysis. Which approach should the team take?

The above condition is added to an S3 bucket policy to restrict access to a specific VPC endpoint. An EC2 instance in the same VPC is unable to access the bucket. What is the most likely reason?

A financial services company uses a multi-account AWS organization with a centralized security account. The security team has enabled Amazon GuardDuty in all accounts and configured it to send findings to the security account via AWS Organizations. The team also uses AWS Security Hub in the security account to aggregate findings. They have set up automated response using AWS Systems Manager Automation documents to isolate compromised EC2 instances by applying a security group that denies all traffic. However, during a recent incident, the automation failed because the Systems Automation document did not have permission to modify the security group in the member account. The security team needs to design a solution that allows the security account to automatically isolate instances in any member account. What should they do?

A security team is setting up incident response automation. Which TWO steps should be taken to ensure that a compromised EC2 instance is isolated while preserving forensic data? (Choose TWO.)

A company wants to ensure that all API calls made to AWS are logged for security analysis. Which TWO services can be used to achieve this? (Choose two.)

An organization uses AWS Organizations with hundreds of accounts. The security team wants to automatically respond to a specific GuardDuty finding by isolating the affected EC2 instance. What is the recommended architecture?

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer reviews this CloudFormation template. The bucket is intended to be private. What is the security issue in the configuration?

A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to detect suspicious API activity across all accounts in real time. They have enabled AWS CloudTrail in all accounts and are sending logs to a centralized S3 bucket. However, they are receiving alerts only after a significant delay. What should the security team do to reduce the latency of threat detection?

A company wants to automate the response to a specific GuardDuty finding. When GuardDuty detects a finding of type `UnauthorizedAccess:EC2/SSHBruteForce`, they want to automatically block the offending IP address using a network ACL. Which AWS service can they use to orchestrate this response?

A security engineer is investigating a potential compromise. An EC2 instance running Amazon Linux 2 is sending outbound traffic to a known malicious IP address. The engineer needs to capture the network traffic for analysis without alerting the attacker. Which solution meets these requirements?

A security engineer is analyzing the VPC Flow Logs entry in the exhibit. The log shows traffic from an internal IP to an external IP. Which potential security concern should the engineer investigate?

A company uses AWS Lambda functions to process data from an S3 bucket. The security team wants to detect any unauthorized attempts to invoke the Lambda function from outside the company's VPC. The Lambda function is configured to be VPC-enabled and is attached to a VPC with a security group. The team has enabled CloudTrail and VPC Flow Logs. However, they are not seeing any logs for the Lambda invocations in CloudTrail. The team has checked that CloudTrail is logging management events and that the Lambda function is being invoked. What is the most likely reason for the missing CloudTrail logs?

A security engineer is configuring an AWS environment to detect and respond to potential security threats. Which AWS service can be used to automate the remediation of unwanted access to Amazon S3 buckets by invoking AWS Lambda functions?

A security engineer needs to detect and alert on suspicious API calls made from a compromised EC2 instance. The instance is associated with an IAM role that has permissions to call various AWS APIs. Which AWS service should the engineer use to monitor API calls and trigger alerts?

A company is designing an automated incident response workflow. When a high-severity GuardDuty finding is generated, the security team wants to automatically isolate the affected EC2 instance by modifying its security group to deny all traffic. Which service should orchestrate this response?

During an incident, a security engineer needs to isolate a compromised Amazon EC2 instance without losing the ability to capture forensic data from its EBS volumes. What is the best course of action?

A security engineer is designing an incident response plan for a containerized application running on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The engineer needs to ensure that if a container is compromised, the incident response team can capture a memory dump and disk snapshot for forensic analysis. The containers are stateless and use ephemeral storage. Which approach provides the necessary forensic data?

A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants a centralized view of all security alerts and findings from services like GuardDuty, Security Hub, and Inspector across all accounts. What is the MOST efficient way to achieve this?

A security engineer is investigating a potential data exfiltration incident. The engineer notices large volumes of data being transferred from an Amazon S3 bucket to an external IP address. Which AWS services can be used to detect and alert on such behavior? (Choose THREE.)

A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to detect and automatically respond to suspicious API calls across all accounts. Which solution is the MOST efficient and scalable?