CompTIA Security+ 2023

The most likely threat actor to be hired by a foreign government to attack critical systems in other countries is an organized crime group. These groups have the resources, expertise, and networks needed to carry out sophisticated cyber attacks. Hacktivists and whistleblowers typically act based on personal or ideological motives rather than as hired entities, while unskilled attackers lack the necessary proficiency.

Salting is the process of adding random data to the input of a one-way hash function to ensure that identical inputs produce unique hashes, thereby increasing the complexity and security of the hash. This method helps to prevent attacks such as precomputed hash tables or rainbow tables.

Phishing is a type of social engineering attack where an attacker sends a fraudulent email or message that appears to come from a legitimate source in order to deceive individuals into revealing sensitive information, such as login credentials. In this scenario, the email urging the employee to update contact information and resulting in a 'page not found' error after login is a classic example of a phishing attack, where the intention was to harvest the employee's login credentials.

To limit outbound DNS traffic, the correct ACL should permit outbound DNS requests from the specific device with IP address 10.50.10.25 and deny all other outbound DNS requests. This can be accomplished by first allowing DNS traffic from the specific IP address and then denying all other DNS traffic. The correct configuration is: Access list outbound permit 10.50.10.25/32 0.0.0.0/0 port 53, followed by Access list outbound deny 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 port 53.

Single Sign-On (SSO) enables users to authenticate once with their domain credentials and then access multiple applications without needing to re-enter their credentials each time. This reduces the number of credentials employees need to maintain, which aligns with the company's preference to use domain credentials for new SaaS applications. LEAP and PEAP are related to wireless authentication protocols, and while Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) enhances security, it does not reduce the number of credentials needed.