Question 58 - 312-38 discussion

Website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of the site. These are typically the work of system crackers, who break into a Web server and replace the hosted website with one of their own. Sometimes, the Defacer makes fun of the system administrator for failing to maintain server security. Most times, the defacement is harmless; however, it can sometimes be used as a distraction to cover up more sinister actions such as uploading malware.

A high-profile website defacement was carried out on the website of the company SCO Group following its assertion that Linux contained stolen code. The title of the page was changed from Red Hat vs. SCO to SCO vs. World with various satirical content.

Answer option D is incorrect. Buffer overflow is a condition in which an application receives more data than it is configured to accept. This usually occurs due to programming errors in the application. Buffer overflow can terminate or crash the application.

Answer option B is incorrect. A zero-day attack, also known as zero-hour attack, is a computer threat that tries to exploit computer application vulnerabilities which are unknown to others, undisclosed to the software vendor, or for which no security fix is available. Zero-day exploits (actual code that can use a security hole to carry out an attack) are used or shared by attackers before the software vendor knows about the vulnerability. User awareness training is the most effective technique to mitigate such attacks.

Answer option C is incorrect. Spoofing is a technique that makes a transmission appear to have come from an authentic source by forging the IP address, email address, caller ID, etc. In IP spoofing, a hacker modifies packet headers by using someone else's IP address to hide his identity. However, spoofing cannot be used while surfing the Internet, chatting on-line, etc. because forging the source IP address causes the responses to be misdirected.