Attack Taxonomy

Applied Knowledge Questions

The following questions are designed to test your knowledge of secure networking threats. Sometimes they build on knowledge gained from elsewhere in the book. You might find that each question has more than one possible answer. The answers provided in Appendix B are intended to reinforce concepts that you can apply in your own networking environment.

In this chapter, questions 1 to 5 relate to concepts you read about. Questions 6 and 7, which have no one correct answer, are offered as exercises for you to apply in your own organization.

1:	Drawing on what you learned in this chapter, in most cases, in which order would the following attacks be launched by an attacker: Probe/scan, buffer overflow, rootkit, web application, data scavenging?
2:	Looking at the top five attacks in Table 3-29, which one(s) would you expect to drop out of the top five category if the ratings were adapted specifically to an Internet edge design?
3:	Think about how virus, worm, and Trojan horse attacks propagate. Which kinds of attacks have the best chance of getting past traditional antivirus software?
4:	If you discover that a rootkit has infected your system, what is the best course of action to take to secure your system?
5:	Even though DDoS is classified as a flooding attack, which other attack types does it use in launching the flood?
6:	Download and run Nmap on your computer (assuming you aren't violating your organization's security policy by doing so). Was it able to detect your OS? Were you running any services you were not expecting to see?
7:	In Table 3-29, find at least three places where you disagree with the assigned values. Consider building the table yourself and assigning your own values. Did the top five attacks change?