CND Application And Data Protection Practice Question
A security practitioner is deploying an intrusion prevention system (IPS) rule to detect XML External Entity (XXE) injection attacks in HTTP POST requests. Which core feature of an XML parser is being abused in an XXE attack and must be disabled?
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
✓
Support for Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and external entity references
XXE attacks exploit vulnerable XML parsers that permit the parsing of Document Type Definitions (DTDs) containing external entity references.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Support for HTTP chunked transfer encoding
Why it's wrong here
Chunked transfer encoding is a transport-layer HTTP mechanism, not an XML parser feature.
- ✗
Support for UTF-8 character encoding
Why it's wrong here
UTF-8 character encoding is a standard text encoding format, not an XXE vector.
- ✗
Support for JSON serialization and deserialization
Why it's wrong here
JSON is separate from XML parsing mechanisms.
- ✓
Support for Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and external entity references
Why this is correct
Disabling DTDs and external entity loading in XML parsers prevents XXE vulnerabilities.
About these practice questions
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed August 2026 · checked against the official EC-Council exam blueprint
This CND practice question is part of Courseiva's free EC-Council 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 CND exam.