Cybersecurity Fundamentals
110 flashcards by MentisLibrary
Attacker techniques, network and web application defense, cryptography, authentication, secure development, monitoring and incident response, and the compliance regimes that shape them. For anyone entering security work.
- What is the CIA triad?
- Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability: the three pillars of information security
- What is the difference between authentication and authorization?
- Authentication proves who you are; authorization decides what you may do
- What is phishing?
- Fraudulent messages that impersonate trusted parties to steal credentials or deliver malware
- What is social engineering?
- Manipulating people, rather than technology, into breaking security procedures
- What is malware and what are its main types?
- Malicious software: viruses, worms, trojans, ransomware, spyware, rootkits
- What is ransomware?
- Malware that encrypts data (often after exfiltrating it) and demands payment
- What is a zero-day vulnerability?
- A flaw unknown to the vendor, so no patch exists when attackers exploit it
- What is SQL injection?
- Attacker-controlled input altering a database query's structure
- What is cross-site scripting (XSS)?
- Injecting malicious JavaScript into pages viewed by other users
- What is cross-site request forgery (CSRF)?
- Tricking a logged-in user's browser into sending a request the user never intended
- What is a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack?
- An attacker secretly relays and possibly alters traffic between two parties
- What is a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, and what makes it a DDoS?
- Overwhelming a service so legitimate users cannot use it; DDoS uses many distributed machines (a botnet)
- What is a brute-force attack?
- Systematically trying many passwords or keys until one works
- What is multi-factor authentication (MFA)?
- Requiring two or more proof types: something you know, have, or are
- What is the principle of least privilege?
- Granting only the minimum access needed to do the job, for the minimum time
- What is defense in depth?
- Layering multiple independent controls so one failure does not equal a breach
- What is a zero trust architecture?
- Never trust by network location; verify every request's identity, device, and context explicitly
- What is encryption at rest vs in transit?
- At rest protects stored data; in transit protects data moving across networks
- What is symmetric encryption?
- One shared key both encrypts and decrypts
- What is asymmetric (public-key) encryption?
- A key pair: the public key encrypts (or verifies), the private key decrypts (or signs)
- What is a cryptographic hash function?
- A one-way function mapping any input to a fixed-size digest
- How should passwords be stored?
- Hashed with a slow, salted, memory-hard algorithm: bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2
- What is a salt in password hashing?
- A unique random value mixed into each password before hashing
- What is a digital signature?
- A cryptographic proof that data came from a private-key holder and was not altered
- What is a TLS certificate and what does it prove?
- A CA-signed document binding a domain name to a public key
- What is HTTPS?
- HTTP over TLS: encrypted, authenticated web traffic
- What is a VPN?
- An encrypted tunnel between your device and a remote network or server
- What is a firewall?
- A control that filters network traffic by rules on ports, addresses, and protocols
- What is network segmentation?
- Dividing a network into isolated zones so a breach in one cannot reach the others
- What is an IDS vs an IPS?
- IDS detects and alerts on suspicious traffic; IPS sits inline and blocks it