CompTIA Updated CAS-005 Exam Questions and Answers by simon

This scenario clearly describes asupply chain attack, where the compromise occurs at the vendor or manufacturing stage before the product reaches the customer. The attack impacts many downstream organizations and sectors. SDLC attacks are focused on software development life cycles, side-loading involves unauthorized app installations, and remote code signing focuses on authenticating remote software, none of which fully encapsulate the situation described.

The security engineer should modify the following to fix the email migration issues:

Email CNAME Record: The email CNAME record must be changed to a type A record pointing to 192.168.1.10. This is because CNAME records should not be used where an IP address (A record) is required. Changing it to an A record ensures direct pointing to the correct IP.

TXT Record for DMARC: The TXT record must be changed to "v=dmarc ip4:192.168.1.10 include

com -all". This ensures proper configuration of DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) to include the correct IP address and the email service provider domain.

DMARC: Ensuring the DMARC record is correctly set up helps in preventing email spoofing and phishing, aligning with email security best practices.

The log snippet indicates a DNS AXFR (zone transfer) request, which can be exploited by attackers to gather detailed information about an internal network's infrastructure. Disabling DNS zone transfers is the best solution to mitigate this risk. Zone transfers should generally be restricted to authorized secondary DNS servers and not be publicly accessible, as they can reveal sensitive network information that facilitates lateral movement during an attack.

In the context of establishing a Security Operations Center (SOC) with a threat-modeling function, it's crucial to understand how data flows within the organization's systems. Network and data flow diagrams provide a visual representation of the system's architecture, illustrating how data moves between components, which is essential for identifying potential security weaknesses and antipatterns. Antipatterns are common responses to recurring problems that are ineffective and risk-inducing. By analyzing these diagrams, the consultant can pinpoint areas where security controls may be lacking or misconfigured, thereby facilitating the development of effective threat models.​

While other options like unpatchable IoT devices (Option B) and inventories of cloud resources (Option E) are important for comprehensive security assessments, they are more pertinent during later stages, such as vulnerability management and asset inventory. The initial phase of threat modeling focuses on understanding the system's structure and data flows to identify potential threats, making network and data flow diagrams the most critical information at this stage.​