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Network Attacks And Defense Strategies

This domain covers how attackers exploit networks and how defenders counter them, spanning web application attacks, credential theft, cloud misconfiguration, and lateral movement. Questions present a scenario and ask you to select the correct defensive control, mitigation, or configuration, so you must map each attack technique to a specific defensive technology or hardening step.

37 questions8 easy17 medium12 hard

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What this domain covers

What to know about Network Attacks And Defense Strategies

You must be able to read an attack scenario and choose the precise defensive control that stops it, such as HttpOnly cookies for XSS, a WAF for SQLi, CSPM for public buckets, and Credential Guard for pass-the-hash. Matching the control to the exact attack is the key skill.

Selecting WAF, CSPM, or host hardening controls that match a described attack technique

Applying cookie attributes Secure, HttpOnly, and SameSite to defeat XSS session theft

Understanding NTLM pass-the-hash mitigations such as Credential Guard and disabling NTLM

Using parameterized queries and input validation to block union-based SQL injection

Watch out for

Common Network Attacks And Defense Strategies exam traps

  • ▸Confusing preventive controls with detective controls, such as picking an IDS when the scenario asks for something that blocks the attack
  • ▸Assuming TLS or HTTPS alone stops XSS cookie theft, when HttpOnly and Secure attributes are the actual fix
  • ▸Treating cloud storage exposure as a network firewall issue instead of a bucket policy and CSPM misconfiguration problem

Question index

All Network Attacks And Defense Strategies questions (37)

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1

An organization is hardening its network architecture against supply chain attacks targeting third-party software dependencies and vendor integrations. Which TWO best practices and controls should be implemented? (Choose TWO)

Medium
2

During an incident response engagement, a security analyst discovers that an attacker executed a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability on an internal web application to access cloud instance metadata services (IMDS). Which remediation step should be applied immediately to the cloud application architecture to prevent future SSRF exploitation against IMDS?

Medium
3

A SOC analyst reviewing perimeter firewall logs notices a high volume of inbound TCP SYN packets with randomized source IP addresses targeting multiple open ports on a public-facing web server, and the server's connection table is nearly exhausted. The organization wants to stop this activity at the network edge without blocking legitimate clients. Which solution should the analyst recommend?

Medium
4

An organization's web application is vulnerable to SQL injection (SQLi). An attacker is using union-based queries to extract database contents. Which defensive technology placed in front of the web application can inspect HTTP parameters and block SQLi signatures dynamically?

Medium
5

An administrator notices unusual traffic volume exiting an internal server toward an unknown external IP address on TCP port 4443. Further investigation reveals data exfiltration. Which firewall feature should be configured at the perimeter to inspect and block unauthorized outbound application traffic and unknown protocols?

Medium
6

A company suspects that an insider is using a DNS tunneling tool to exfiltrate small amounts of sensitive data through the corporate recursive resolver. The tool encodes data in the leftmost labels of queries to a domain the company does not own. Which detection approach is most likely to reveal this activity on existing network telemetry?

Medium
7

A security team is implementing defense-in-depth controls to protect an enterprise wireless network against advanced attacks. Which TWO advanced hardening and security configurations should be deployed? (Choose TWO)

Hard
8

An organization is implementing cloud security posture management (CSPM) for its multi-cloud environment. The security team needs to ensure that Amazon S3 storage buckets are not publicly accessible due to misconfigurations. Which automated preventive control should be enforced?

Medium
9

A hospital's network team observes that a single internal host is flooding the Layer 2 CAM table of an access switch with thousands of frames, each carrying a different source MAC address. As a result, the switch begins flooding all unicast traffic out of every port, allowing the attacker to capture traffic destined for other hosts. Which attack is being executed, and which countermeasure most directly addresses it?

Medium
10

A wireless security audit reveals that an unauthorized rogue access point has been deployed within the corporate perimeter, configured with the exact same SSID as the corporate enterprise network to perform an evil twin attack. Which enterprise wireless feature should the network administrator configure on the Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) to automatically detect and contain this rogue AP?

Easy
11

An enterprise incident response team is analyzing a ransomware attack that encrypted network file shares and endpoints. Which TWO immediate containment and eradication actions should the team execute? (Choose TWO)

Hard
12

An organization's security engineer is configuring a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect against common web attacks. Which TWO attack types should the WAF rules be specifically tuned to detect and block? (Choose TWO)

Medium
13

A company's intrusion detection system (IDS) flags multiple suspicious packets containing shellcode signatures destined for an internal database server. However, the security team determines that the application was updated and the traffic was a false positive. Which action should the security analyst take within the Snort configuration to prevent this specific signature from generating future alerts?

Easy
14

A security engineer is hardening a corporate Linux server against privilege escalation. A local user account executes a poorly written binary with the SUID (Set Owner User ID) permission set, gaining root privileges. Which command should the engineer run to locate and remove SUID permissions from unauthorized binaries across the filesystem?

Medium
15

A security analyst reviewing firewall logs notices periodic outbound connections from an internal engineering workstation to a small set of foreign IP addresses, always at roughly 60-second intervals, with payload sizes that vary slightly and destinations that rotate through a hardcoded list. The traffic uses TCP port 443 but the TLS certificate presented by the remote endpoint is self-signed and the User-Agent string is unusual. Which technique is most consistent with these observations?

Hard
16

An organization's Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system alerts on suspicious Active Directory enumeration activity. An internal workstation is executing frequent unauthenticated LDAP queries requesting large numbers of user and group attributes. Which protocol mechanism and defensive configuration should be implemented to mitigate this reconnaissance technique?

Hard
17

An attacker compromises an internal workstation and attempts to perform lateral movement using PsExec. The security team wants to detect and block this activity across the internal Windows domain. Which Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security rule or Group Policy setting should be deployed?

Hard
18

An organization's security team is designing a defense-in-depth network architecture to protect critical internal data zones. Which THREE architectural principles and controls should be implemented to align with an adaptive defense strategy? (Choose THREE)

Medium
19

A security engineer is configuring a Snort Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) rule to detect ICMP echo requests with payloads larger than 1000 bytes, which may indicate covert channel data exfiltration. Which rule header and options combination is correct?

Easy
20

A security team receives alerts indicating that an attacker is performing ARP cache poisoning on the local subnet to conduct a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack. Which switch feature should the network administrator enable to mitigate this threat?

Easy
21

An organization is hardening its public-facing email infrastructure against spoofing and phishing attacks. The security engineer needs to configure a DNS record that specifies which mail servers are authorized to send email on behalf of the domain. Which DNS record type must be created?

Medium
22

A retail company's security team is designing defenses against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeting its public web tier. The team wants to reduce the impact of volumetric floods while preserving legitimate customer traffic. Which THREE measures are appropriate components of the defense strategy? (Choose three.)

Hard
23

A network security analyst observes an ongoing brute-force attack against an SSH service running on a Linux server. Which tool can the analyst configure to automatically inspect authentication failure logs and dynamically block attacker IP addresses via iptables?

Medium
24

A security analyst is reviewing network traffic logs and discovers indicators of an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) utilizing covert command-and-control (C2) communication. Which TWO methods are commonly used by attackers to obfuscate C2 traffic through legitimate network services? (Choose TWO)

Hard
25

A security engineer discovers that an attacker is exploiting a vulnerability in a web application's JSON Web Token (JWT) implementation by modifying the algorithm header to 'none' and bypassing signature verification. How should the application's JWT validation code be updated to fix this vulnerability?

Hard
26

A security analyst notices unusual outbound traffic matching command-and-control (C2) beaconing patterns over HTTPS. The organization wants to inspect outbound encrypted traffic to detect malicious payloads without violating compliance policies. Which enterprise security architecture technique should be implemented?

Easy
27

A security analyst suspects that an internal host has been compromised and is communicating via an encrypted Command and Control (C2) channel utilizing DNS tunneling. Which Wireshark filter and analysis technique should the analyst employ to definitively identify this anomaly?

Medium
28

An enterprise cloud security team is reviewing common cloud security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that lead to data breaches. Which TWO threats are primary vectors in cloud environments? (Choose TWO)

Hard
29

An attacker performs a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack against a web application, successfully stealing sensitive session cookies from victim browsers. The security team is tasked with updating the application's cookie configuration attributes. Which two cookie flags must be set to protect session cookies against theft via XSS and network sniffing?

Hard
30

An attacker performs a pass-the-hash attack to move laterally across an enterprise network using compromised NTLM hashes. The security architecture team wants to implement host-based mitigations to render harvested NTLM hashes unusable for authentication. Which Windows security feature should be enabled?

Hard
31

An attacker targets an enterprise Active Directory domain by performing a DCSync attack, successfully replicating domain controller password data without being a domain controller. Which Active Directory access control rights must be audited and protected to prevent non-administrative users from executing DCSync?

Hard
32

An attacker on the same wireless network as a corporate user sets up a rogue access point that broadcasts the same SSID as the legitimate corporate network and offers a stronger signal. Users connect automatically, and the attacker captures their credentials through a fake captive portal. Which attack has been performed?

Easy
33

A network administrator is hardening a Cisco switch infrastructure against Layer 2 attacks. Which THREE features should be enabled and configured on the access and distribution layers? (Choose THREE)

Medium
34

An organization wants to protect its internal network against unauthorized DHCP servers (DHCP spoofing and rogue DHCP starvation attacks). Which switch security feature should be enabled on all untrusted access switch ports?

Medium
35

A security operations center (SOC) analyst is investigating a compromised Linux web server. Which TWO log files and forensic artifacts should the analyst examine to determine the initial access vector and persistence mechanisms used by the attacker? (Choose TWO)

Medium
36

A security analyst is hardening a Linux-based web server and wants to implement mandatory access control (MAC) to restrict processes to only the resources necessary for their function. Which built-in Linux kernel security module should the analyst configure?

Easy
37

An enterprise is updating its email security controls to prevent phishing, credential harvesting, and spoofing attacks. Which THREE protocols and DNS records should be implemented and strictly enforced? (Choose THREE)

Easy

Frequently asked questions

What does the Network Attacks And Defense Strategies domain cover on the CND exam?
You must be able to read an attack scenario and choose the precise defensive control that stops it, such as HttpOnly cookies for XSS, a WAF for SQLi, CSPM for public buckets, and Credential Guard for pass-the-hash. Matching the control to the exact attack is the key skill.
How many questions are in this domain?
This page lists all 37 Network Attacks And Defense Strategies questions in the CND question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
What is the best way to practise this domain?
Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
Can I practise only Network Attacks And Defense Strategies questions?
Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.
EC-Council Certified Network Defender (CND, 312-38, Blueprint v4.0) (CND) Network Attacks And Defense Strategies Practice Questions