EC-Council Certified Penetration Testing Professional (CPENT) (CPENT) (CPENT) — Questions 1–75

A hardware penetration tester is investigating an IoT device printed circuit board (PCB) to extract sensitive firmware or debug data. Which THREE of the following physical hardware interfaces are commonly targeted by testers to gain console access or read memory? (Choose THREE)

An AWS administrator wants to ensure that all data stored in newly created Amazon S3 buckets is automatically encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with customer-managed keys (SSE-KMS). What is the most scalable way to enforce this?

When executing BloodHound to map Active Directory attack paths, which collector option should be specified via SharpHound to gather computer local admin rights without requiring Domain Admin privileges?

A security analyst is investigating an IoT incident where an attacker gained unauthorized access to an MQTT broker. The analyst wants to inspect the broker configuration file on a Debian-based Linux system running Eclipse Mosquitto to check if anonymous access was enabled. What is the default file path for the Mosquitto configuration file?

A penetration tester is analyzing a compromised Windows system and wants to check for stored credentials in the Windows Credential Manager. Which command-line utility can be used to list saved credentials?

Which native Windows command-line tool can be used by a penetration tester to view cached Kerberos tickets currently loaded in the user session?

When pivoting through a compromised Windows system during an internal engagement, you need to enumerate active TCP and UDP network connections, listening ports, and associated routing tables using native operating system binaries. Which THREE of the following commands or tools native to Windows can be used to gather this network enumeration data?

An ethical hacker is testing an ICS network that utilizes the IEC 60870-5-104 protocol for telecontrol equipment. The hacker wants to test whether control commands can be sent without proper authentication. Which Wireshark filter syntax should the hacker apply to isolate IEC 104 application layer frames in a capture file?

During an assessment, a penetration tester captures an LLMNR/NBT-NS broadcast request on the local network segment. Which tool can the tester use to spoof the response and capture the resulting NTLMv2 password hash when the victim machine attempts authentication?

An operator has gained administrative access to a Linux machine and wants to ensure persistent access that survives reboots while minimizing the chance of detection by standard security audits. Which THREE persistence methods are commonly implemented on Linux systems?

An attacker has gained access to an internal machine and wants to determine whether network traffic can be redirected using source routing options in IPv4 packets. Which tool allows crafting custom IPv4 packets with source routing options enabled?

When conducting lateral movement in an Active Directory environment, which TWO of the following techniques are commonly used to move from a compromised workstation to a server?

During an assessment of network perimeter services, you discover a misconfigured Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) daemon running on a core router. Which THREE of the following tools or Metasploit auxiliary modules can be leveraged to enumerate sensitive information such as running processes, network interfaces, and routing tables via SNMP?

You have gained access to a Linux jump box and need to set up a local port forward using SSH to access an internal web application running on port 80 of a restricted server (10.0.0.5) that is only accessible from the jump box. Which SSH client flag combination establishes a local port forwarding tunnel listening on port 8080 of your attacking machine?

An ICS penetration tester is auditing a substation utilizing the IEC 61850 standard for electrical substation automation. The tester captures Generic Object Oriented Substation Events (GOOSE) messages on the network. Which Layer 2 Ethernet type hex value identifies GOOSE multicast frames?

An AWS administrator wants to prevent users from accidentally creating public Amazon S3 buckets across the entire AWS account. Which specific AWS feature should be enabled?

A penetration tester is analyzing a smart medical pump and needs to check for open ports and running services on the embedded operating system. Using Nmap, the tester wants to perform a TCP SYN scan against the device while avoiding noisy service version detection to remain stealthy. Which Nmap flag specifies a SYN stealth scan?

An advanced adversary has gained Domain Administrator privileges and wants to establish stealthy, long-term persistence in Active Directory without relying solely on traditional user accounts or standard scheduled tasks. Which THREE advanced persistence mechanisms can be deployed in an Active Directory environment? (Choose THREE)

A penetration tester is assessing a Kubernetes cluster deployment. Which THREE of the following container or cluster configurations represent severe container escape or privilege escalation risks? (Choose THREE)

An attacker has successfully established a man-in-the-middle position on a local network segment using ARP spoofing. To ensure they capture sensitive authentication traffic, which THREE tools or utilities can capture and parse credentials passing across the wire? (Choose THREE)

An attacker has gained command execution on an internal machine and wants to bypass egress filtering that blocks all outbound TCP and UDP ports except port 53. Which tool can be used to tunnel arbitrary TCP traffic encapsulated inside DNS queries out of the network?

An IoT firmware analyst is performing emulation of a MIPS-based router firmware binary using Firmadyne. Which TWO of the following steps or components are critical to successfully emulate and analyze the firmware image? (Choose TWO)

During an internal penetration test, an operator compromises a low-privileged domain user account and wishes to perform a Kerberoasting attack to harvest service principal name (SPN) tickets. Which standard utility included with Windows PowerShell or Sysinternals can be used to request these tickets without administrative privileges?

During an Azure penetration test, an attacker identifies an Azure Function with an HTTP trigger that uses function-level keys. However, the function key was leaked in a public GitHub repository. What level of access does this key provide?

Which TWO methods are commonly used for data exfiltration during a penetration test to bypass basic network monitoring?

An auditor is reviewing an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster and discovers that Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) was disabled during cluster creation, and Azure Active Directory integration is not enabled. What is the primary security consequence?

A pentester is analyzing an industrial control network and identifies devices communicating via EtherNet/IP (CIP). The pentester wants to enumerate explicit messaging objects and device identity data. Which Nmap script should the tester invoke?

An AWS penetration tester discovers that an Amazon DynamoDB table contains sensitive PII stored in plaintext, and the table is encrypted using the default AWS owned key rather than a customer managed KMS key. What is the security recommendation?

An assessment team is analyzing an embedded Linux firmware image for an industrial IoT gateway. They have successfully extracted the filesystem using Binwalk, but they need to statically analyze the compiled binaries for potential buffer overflows and insecure function calls. Which tool is specifically designed to perform static binary analysis and identify vulnerable functions likestrcpy within the extracted filesystem?

Which TWO configuration checks should a penetration tester perform when auditing an Active Directory domain for potential NTLM Relay vulnerabilities?

A penetration tester is analyzing an IoT mobile companion app that communicates with a smart thermostat via BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). Which tool can the tester use on a rooted Android device to intercept and inspect BLE GATT characteristics and descriptors?

An AWS penetration tester identifies an EC2 instance configured with an IAM instance profile that grants broad s3:* permissions across all S3 buckets in the account. What AWS service feature should be recommended to restrict these permissions based on least privilege?

During an Azure assessment, an auditor finds that a Logic App has an HTTP trigger with no authentication mechanism configured (Anonymous access). The Logic App has permissions to read sensitive Azure Blob Storage containers. What type of vulnerability does this represent?

You are assessing a Linux privilege escalation path. Which THREE techniques would allow you to escalate to root if you have write access to the /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow file?

During network enumeration of a Windows domain, a penetration tester discovers multiple legacy services running. Which TWO protocols or services, if enabled, frequently expose sensitive domain or system information without requiring authentication? (Choose TWO)

When generating a Silver Ticket using Impacket's ticketer.py, what specific piece of cryptographic material is required instead of the KRBTGT hash?

During a post-exploitation phase on a Windows workstation, a tester dumps LSASS memory and extracts an NTLM password hash. The tester then uses the CrackMapExec tool to authenticate to other workstations using this hash without cracking it first. What attack technique is being executed?

During an IoT penetration test, an analyst discovers that a connected medical device communicates with its cloud backend using MQTT over TLS, but certificate validation is disabled in the client code. The analyst wants to perform a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack to inspect the MQTT traffic. Which tool configured with a custom Certificate Authority (CA) is best suited to intercept this TLS-wrapped MQTT traffic?

You are performing a penetration test against a network segment where direct outbound TCP connections are blocked by a strict firewall, but outbound DNS queries over UDP port 53 to an external DNS server are permitted. To tunnel traffic out of this restricted environment, which tool allows you to encapsulate arbitrary TCP traffic within DNS queries?

A penetration tester is performing post-exploitation reconnaissance on a Linux machine. Which THREE files or directories should the tester examine to identify potential sensitive configuration data, credentials, or cron jobs? Choose three.

During an IoT assessment, a tester discovers that a connected security camera runs an embedded web server with a CGI script vulnerable to OS command injection via a GET parameter. Which automated vulnerability scanner includes specific modules for detecting web-based CGI vulnerabilities and command injection?

During a hybrid cloud assessment, a penetration tester discovers that an organization uses Azure Arc to manage on-premises Windows servers. Which THREE security risks or attack vectors are associated with a compromised Azure Arc Connected Machine Agent (azcmagent) on an on-premises server? (Choose three)

Which THREE conditions must be met for a successful Resource-Based Constrained Delegation (RBCD) attack against a target computer object?

Which TWO of the following Impacket tools can be utilized to perform credential dumping or secret extraction from Active Directory or target systems when valid administrator credentials are known?

During a penetration test of an Azure Active Directory tenant, an attacker identifies multiple security misconfigurations. Which TWO of the following techniques represent common Azure AD attack vectors or misconfigurations? (Choose TWO)

A penetration tester is evaluating an Active Directory environment and discovers that LDAP signing is not enforced. Which attack technique does this misconfiguration directly facilitate?

An OT security analyst is reviewing network traffic on an industrial control system network and identifies DNP3 protocol packets. Which THREE of the following fields or functions are associated with the DNP3 protocol structure and security? (Choose THREE)

An external penetration tester wants to test if a target organization's mail server is susceptible to email harvesting by issuing standard SMTP VRFY and EXPN commands. Which tool performs this type of mail server enumeration?

A penetration tester is performing a container escape on a Kubernetes cluster. The tester gains remote code execution inside a pod and discovers that the container is running with privileged mode disabled, but the service account token mounted at /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token has permissions to create new Pods using the cluster-admin cluster role. Which kubectl command or API call pattern should the tester use to achieve a container escape to the underlying host?

A security researcher is evaluating an industrial IoT gateway running Linux. During a filesystem audit of the extracted rootfs, the researcher finds that the '/etc/shadow' file contains weak password hashes for the root user. Which utility can the researcher use offline on their host machine to attempt password cracking via dictionary attack against the extracted hash?

During an assessment of a smart manufacturing facility, a penetration tester discovers an unauthenticated MQTT broker allowing anonymous publishing and subscription. Which TWO actions should the tester perform to validate the security risks associated with this misconfiguration? (Choose TWO)

A penetration tester is analyzing a Kubernetes cluster where pods utilize service accounts with automountServiceAccountToken set to true globally or on sensitive pods. The tester gains remote code execution inside a pod running with a high-privilege service account token. How can they use this token against the Kubernetes API?

A tester has located a domain user account configured with Constrained Delegation (S4U2Self / S4U2Proxy) pointing to a target service. What tool and module in Impacket can be used to leverage this delegation to obtain a TGS for a privileged user (e.g., Administrator)?

A penetration tester is analyzing a Linux host for potential privilege escalation vectors related to sudo rights. Which THREE commands or checks should the tester perform to identify misconfigured sudo privileges? Choose three.

When conducting post-exploitation, what is the primary risk of using 'Mimikatz' on a modern Windows system with Windows Defender enabled?

You have identified an unquoted service path vulnerability on a Windows server. What is the correct remediation path to escalate privileges?

An attacker has intercepted ARP traffic on a switched local network and wants to maintain a man-in-the-middle position without causing high volumes of repetitive ARP reply frames that might trigger security alerts. Which tool allows selective, low-frequency ARP poisoning?

When executing a DCSync attack programmatically via Impacket's secretsdump.py, how does the tool interact with Active Directory to request password data without running code on the domain controller?

During a Windows privilege escalation assessment, a tester discovers that the local 'SeImpersonatePrivilege' is enabled on the current service account token. Which exploitation tool class is best suited for abusing this privilege?

A security consultant is performing a penetration test against an embedded IoT device that exposes an insecure bootloader and serial console. Which TWO of the following procedures can the consultant execute via the U-Boot serial prompt to compromise device security? (Choose TWO)

Which TWO tools are commonly used for analyzing BloodHound database outputs or querying attack paths during an Active Directory penetration test?

A penetration tester is performing an attack utilizing the PetitPotam (MS-EFSR) vulnerability against a domain controller. What is the primary objective of forcing the domain controller to authenticate via PetitPotam?

During an internal engagement, a penetration tester attempts to perform pass-the-hash using Mimikatz, but receives an error indicating that Credential Guard is enabled. Which exploitation technique bypasses this limitation by forcing LSASS to interact with a compromised RPC endpoint?

An elite penetration tester needs to pivot through a compromised Linux host using SSH local port forwarding (-L) to access a database server running on an internal port behind a firewall. Which correct syntax establishes a local port forward routing port 3306 on the attacker's machine to the internal database server IP 10.0.0.50 on port 3306 via the pivot host?

An ethical hacker is examining an operational technology (OT) network and needs to identify programmable logic controllers (PLCs) using their native industrial protocols. Which default TCP port should the hacker scan to discover Modbus/TCP devices?

During an AWS penetration test, the tester finds an Amazon API Gateway REST API configured with an AWS_IAM authorizer, but one specific method is mistakenly set to 'Authorization: None' (Open API method). What security risk does this introduce?

A penetration tester is reviewing the firmware of a smart electricity meter and discovers that the bootloader is unlocked. The tester connects a USB-to-UART serial adapter to the board's exposed pins and interrupts the boot sequence to gain a root shell. Which environment variable or kernel boot parameter must the tester modify to bypass the root password authentication prompt entirely?

A security engineer is hardening an industrial SCADA environment against remote attacks. Which THREE of the following mitigation strategies are recommended best practices for securing OT networks? (Choose THREE)

An OT security engineer is conducting a vulnerability assessment on a Distributed Control System (DCS). The engineer needs to test for unauthorized firmware write capabilities on a legacy controller using the Modbus protocol. Which Modbus function code is typically associated with writing multiple holding registers, which could be abused to modify configuration parameters?

During an internal penetration test, you need to identify active Windows hosts on a local subnet without generating noisy TCP or UDP port scan traffic. Which tool and command natively uses ARP requests to quickly map live systems on the local Ethernet segment?

An operator has successfully established a Meterpreter session on a Windows Server 2019 domain member. To maintain access across system reboots without creating a new local user account, the operator decides to implement a WMI persistence mechanism. Which command sequence correctly establishes a WMI event subscription that executes a payload whenever the system boots?

An analyst is examining the firmware of an IoT gateway and discovers a JFFS2 file system image. The analyst wants to extract the file system contents. Which tool, specifically designed for JFFS2 extraction and analysis, should the analyst run on a Linux workstation?

During an assessment of an Azure tenant, an attacker successfully exploits a user credential and enumerates enterprise applications. They identify a service principal with a high-privilege app role assignment (e.g., PrivilegedRoleAdministrator.ReadWrite.All). What is the primary attack path enabled by this misconfiguration?

An attacker has gained access to a Linux machine and wants to enumerate all SUID binaries to find potential privilege escalation vectors. Which find command should the tester execute to locate all files with the SUID permission set while suppressing permission denied error messages?

You have obtained a memory dump from a Windows machine. Which tool allows you to extract hashes, including NTLM and Kerberos tickets, from this dump?