Comptia Sec+ SYO 501: Exam Objectives

EXAM OBJECTIVES (DOMAINS)

The table below lists the domains measured by this examination
and the extent to which they are represented:

DOMAIN  OF EXAMINATION

1.0 Threats, Attacks and Vulnerabilities
2.0 Technologies and Tools
3.0 Architecture and Design
4.0 Identity and Access Management
5.0 Risk Management
6.0 Cryptography and PKI
1.0 Threats, Attacks and Vulnerabilities

1.1 Given a scenario, analyze indicators of compromise
and determine the type of malware.

• Viruses
• Crypto-malware
• Ransomware
• Worm
• Trojan
• Rootkit
• Keylogger
• Adware
• Spyware

• Bots
• RAT
• Logic bomb
• Backdoor

1.2 Compare and contrast types of attacks.

• Social engineering
- Phishing
- Spear phishing
- Whaling
- Vishing
- Tailgating
- Impersonation
- Dumpster diving
- Shoulder surfing
- Hoax
- Watering hole attack
- Principles (reasons for effectiveness)
- Authority
- Intimidation
- Consensus
- Scarcity
- Familiarity
- Trust
- Urgency
• Application/service attacks
- DoS
- DDoS
- Man-in-the-middle
- Buffer overflow
- Injection
- Cross-site scripting
- Cross-site request forgery
- Privilege escalation
- ARP poisoning
- Amplification
- DNS poisoning
- Domain hijacking
- Man-in-the-browser
- Zero day
- Replay
- Pass the hash
- Hijacking and related attacks
- Clickjacking
- Session hijacking
- URL hijacking
- Typo squatting
- Driver manipulation
- Shimming
- Refactoring
- MAC spoofing
- IP spoofing
• Wireless attacks
- Replay
- IV
- Evil twin
- Rogue AP
- Jamming
- WPS
- Bluejacking
- Bluesnarfing
- RFID
- NFC
- Disassociation
• Cryptographic attacks
- Birthday
- Known plain text/cipher text
- Rainbow tables
- Dictionary
- Brute force
- Online vs. offline
- Collision
- Downgrade
- Replay
- Weak implementations

1.3 Explain threat actor types and attributes.

• Types of actors
- Script kiddies
- Hacktivist
- Organized crime
- Nation states/APT
- Insiders
- Competitors
• Attributes of actors
- Internal/external
- Level of sophistication
- Resources/funding
- Intent/motivation
• Use of open-source intelligence

1.4 Explain penetration testing concepts.

• Active reconnaissance
• Passive reconnaissance
• Pivot
• Initial exploitation
• Persistence
• Escalation of privilege
• Black box
• White box
• Gray box
• Penetration testing vs.
vulnerability scanning

1.5 Explain vulnerability scanning concepts.

• Passively test security controls
• Identify vulnerability
• Identify lack of security controls
• Identify common misconfigurations
• Intrusive vs. non-intrusive
• Credentialed vs. non-credentialed
• False positive

1.6 Explain the impact associated with types of vulnerabilities.

• Race conditions
• Vulnerabilities due to:
- End-of-life systems
- Embedded systems
- Lack of vendor support
• Improper input handling
• Improper error handling
• Misconfiguration/weak configuration
• Default configuration
• Resource exhaustion
• Untrained users
• Improperly configured accounts
• Vulnerable business processes
• Weak cipher suites and implementations
• Memory/buffer vulnerability
- Memory leak
- Integer overflow
- Buffer overflow
- Pointer dereference
- DLL injection
• System sprawl/undocumented assets
• Architecture/design weaknesses
• New threats/zero day
• Improper certificate and
key management