CS0-003 Incident Response and Management Practice Question
During the detection and analysis phase of an incident, an analyst identifies a file with a hash that matches a known malware signature. The analyst wants to enrich this IOC with additional context. Which resource is BEST suited for this enrichment?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
VirusTotal
VirusTotal aggregates antivirus scan results and provides additional context such as file metadata, behavior, and community comments.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Shodan
Why it's wrong here
Shodan is a specialized search engine designed to scan the internet for publicly accessible, connected devices, open ports, and active services. While it is invaluable for identifying exposed assets, banner grabbing, and external vulnerabilities, it cannot ingest or analyze file hashes to determine if a file is malicious.
- ✗
WHOIS lookup
Why it's wrong here
A WHOIS lookup query retrieves registration details, registrar information, creation dates, and administrative contact data associated with a specific domain name or IP address block. This protocol is useful for investigating malicious infrastructure but lacks any capability to process, analyze, or provide threat intelligence on cryptographic file hashes.
- ✓
VirusTotal
Why this is correct
VirusTotal is an industry-standard threat intelligence platform that aggregates antivirus engines and website scanners to analyze submitted files, URLs, and cryptographic hashes. During incident detection, analysts query VirusTotal with a file's MD5, SHA-1, or SHA-256 hash to rapidly determine if known malware has been previously identified by the security community.
- ✗
Passive DNS
Why it's wrong here
Passive DNS databases log historical domain-to-IP address mapping relationships over time without querying the live DNS infrastructure directly. Security analysts leverage this data to map out adversary infrastructure and track domain changes, but it does not contain file-level metadata or support the analysis of cryptographic file hashes.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Identity-Based Attack Patterns: Pass-the-Hash, Kerberoasting
Key term
Incident
An incident is a security event that violates an organization's policies or threatens its data, systems, or operations, requiring a structured response.
Key term
Analysis
In incident response, analysis is the process of examining data and events to determine what happened, how it happened, and what actions to take.
About these practice questions
This CS0-004 question is part of Courseiva's 701-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CS0-004 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CS0-004 exam.