CompTIA Security+ Master Review

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering threat actors, attacks, network security tools, identity management, architecture, and cryptographic protocols from the CompTIA Security+ cheat sheet.

Crypto-malware

A malicious program that encrypts programs and files on a computer in order to extort money from the user.

Ransomware

Malware that denies access to a computer system or data until a ransom is paid, commonly spread via phishing emails or unknowingly infected websites.

Worm

A self-contained infection capable of spreading itself automatically through networks, emails, and messages.

Trojan

A form of malware that disguises itself by pretending to be a harmless application.

Rootkit

A backdoor program that grants an attacker full remote access to a compromised system.

Keylogger

A malicious program that records and saves all keystrokes entered on an infected machine.

RAT (Remote Access Trojan)

A form of Trojan horse malware designed to be operated remotely by an attacker.

Logic Bomb

A malicious program that remains dormant until triggered by a specific event or date.

Watering Hole Attack

A security exploit targeting a specific highly secured group by infecting a website commonly visited by members of that group.

Spear Phishing

A targeted social engineering attack directed at specific individuals rather than a broad audience.

Whaling

A specific social engineering attack targeting a high-profile, wealthy, or powerful individual.

Buffer Overflow

An anomaly where a program attempts to write more data into a fixed block of memory than the allocated buffer can hold.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

A web application vulnerability that allows an attacker to inject client-side scripts directly into web pages viewed by other users.

Cross-Site Request Forgery (XSRF)

An exploit where unauthorized commands are transmitted from a user that the website trusts, allowing cookie theft and password harvesting.

ARP Poisoning

The act of falsifying the IP-to-MAC address resolution process utilized by TCP/IP networks.

DNS Poisoning

An exploit targeting vulnerabilities in the Domain Name System to divert network traffic away from legitimate servers toward fraudulent ones.

Pass the Hash

An authentication attack that steals and reuses a password hash—commonly associated with the Microsoft NTLM protocol—to log in as the target user without knowing the plaintext password.

Clickjacking

An attack that tricks a user into clicking a malicious link by concealing it beneath a transparent layer over a legitimate-appearing webpage.

Shimming

The process of injecting alternate or compensation code into a system to modify its operational behavior without altering the original code base.

Refactoring

Rewriting the internal processing and structure of software code without altering its external behavior.

Evil Twin

A rogue wireless access point configured with the identical SSID of a legitimate network to intercept user traffic.

Bluejacking

The unauthorized transmission of unsolicited text or data messages to a Bluetooth-enabled device.

Bluesnarfing

The unauthorized access to, or theft of information from, a Bluetooth device.

Birthday Attack

A cryptographic attack used to find hash collisions, based on the mathematical principle that identical functions on two separate inputs yielding matching outputs indicates matching inputs.

Rainbow Table

A large precomputed data set of plaintext passwords and their corresponding encrypted hashes used to expedite password attacks.

Downgrade Attack

An attack forcing a system to fall back to an older, less secure cryptographic implementation (such as the POODLE attack forcing TLS v1.0 down to SSL).

Pivot

The technique during penetration testing of using an initially compromised low-security host to attack other systems on the network; also known as island hopping.

Race Condition

A software or system vulnerability where behavior and output depend uncontrollably on execution timing and the sequence of events.

Implicit Deny

The default final rule in an Access Control List specifying that any network traffic not explicitly allowed is automatically rejected.

Stateful Firewall

A firewall that filters and blocks traffic based on the state and context of packets within an established connection, maintaining records in a state table.

IPSec Tunnel Mode

The default mode of IPSec operation wherein the entire original IP packet—payload and header—is encrypted and encapsulated inside a new packet.

Authentication Header (AH)

An IPSec component providing integrity and authentication verification that data packets originated from the source designated in the header.

Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)

An IPSec protocol that provides the authentication services of AH while also delivering data confidentiality through encryption.

Flood Guard

A switch configuration that mitigates MAC flooding attacks by limiting the maximum number of MAC addresses allowed on a single interface.

Reverse Proxy

A proxy server that intercepts requests from external Internet clients and directs them onward to internal back-end web servers.

SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)

A centralized security software platform that performs log aggregation, event correlation, automated alerting, time synchronization, and event deduplication.

Data Execution Prevention (DEP)

A system protection mechanism that marks memory regions as non-executable to prevent malicious code execution during attacks such as buffer overflows.

Dig (Domain Information Groper)

An advanced Linux-based command-line network administration tool used to query and inspect DNS name servers.

Banner Grabbing

The technique of capturing the initial banner message sent by an active network service to determine its identity, software version, and operating system.

Containerization

An application virtualization method that isolates an application and its dependencies into a container without running an entire guest operating system.

Geofencing

The practice of using GPS to establish virtual geographic boundaries that govern whether a mobile application or device can be operated.

COPE (Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled)

A deployment architecture where mobile devices are owned and provisioned by an organization while allowing employees personal use.

DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions)

A protocol extension designed to provide origin authentication and integrity validation for DNS queries using digital signatures.

SRTP (Secure Real-time Transport Protocol)

A network protocol providing encryption, message authentication, and integrity protection for real-time voice and video traffic.

LDAPS (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol Secure)

Directory query protocol communicating over TCP port $636$ using SSL/TLS encryption to prevent plaintext transmission.

Hardware Root of Trust

A hardware-level baseline of trust, typically established via a private cryptographic key permanently burned into a TPM chip during manufacturing.

SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)

Industrial control systems used across multiple industries to automate and manage heavy machinery and industrial processes, requiring segmentation.

Dynamic Analysis (Fuzzing)

A software security assessment method that inputs unexpected or malformed data into an application to discover crashes and memory leaks.

Type I Hypervisor

A bare-metal hypervisor that operates directly on underlying physical hardware rather than within an existing host operating system.

PaaS (Platform as a Service)

A cloud service tier where the provider manages middleware, runtime, OS, and infrastructure, leaving the customer responsible for managing applications and data.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

A cloud service model where the provider furnishes physical hardware, virtualization, and storage, while the customer maintains the OS, middleware, and software.

Mantrap

A physical access security design consisting of a small space enclosed by two interlocking doors to verify and authenticate visitors individually.

Faraday Cage

An enclosure formed by conductive metal mesh or screening designed to shield electronic hardware against electrostatic discharges and electromagnetic interference.

Kerberos

An authentication protocol created by MIT that utilizes a ticket-granting mechanism to provide mutual client-server authentication over networks.

TACACS+

A remote access protocol using TCP port $49$ that encrypts entire packets and isolates authentication and authorization functions.

RADIUS

An authentication service combining authentication and authorization on port $1812$ and accounting on port $1813$, which only encrypts the password.

Mandatory Access Control (MAC)

A rigid access control model where objects receive sensitivity labels, subjects receive clearance levels, and access is dictated strictly by classification.

Discretionary Access Control (DAC)

An access control framework in which the creator or owner of an object retains full authority to assign access permissions via an Access Control List.

Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC)

An access model that dynamically evaluates multiple contextual parameters such as user attributes, time of day, geolocation, and IP address to make authorization decisions.

Crossover Error Rate (CER)

The graphical intersection point where the False Acceptance Rate (FAR) and False Rejection Rate (FRR) are equal, denoting the benchmark accuracy of a biometric system.

TOTP (Time-based One-time Password)

An authentication token standard that generates a temporary passcode valid for a specific window, typically lasting around $30\,\text{seconds}$.

HOTP (HMAC-based One-Time Password)

An open standard algorithm that creates a single-use password that expires immediately after being used once.

Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS)

A cryptographic property ensuring that a compromise of long-term server private keys cannot be leveraged to decrypt past session conversations by generating unique temporary keys for each exchange.

Key Stretching

A technique that repeatedly hashes password inputs (using mechanisms like Bcrypt or PBKDF2) to slow down and defend against brute-force attacks.

AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)

A symmetric block cipher utilizing the Rijndael algorithm with $128\text{-bit}$ blocks and key lengths of $128\text{-bit}$, $192\text{-bit}$, or $256\text{-bit}$.

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)

An asymmetric algorithm utilizing the algebraic curves over finite fields, providing robust security with smaller key sizes and lower CPU resource consumption.

HMAC (Hash-Based Message Authentication Code)

A cryptographic construct that combines a hash algorithm with a secret symmetric key to deliver both integrity and authentication at higher processing speeds than asymmetric algorithms.

CCMP

An advanced wireless cryptographic protocol based on $128\text{-bit}$ AES encryption designed to replace TKIP in WPA2 networks.

OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol)

A query-response protocol allowing clients to rapidly query a validation authority with a certificate's serial number to check for revocation status.

Certificate Stapling

The process of appending a time-stamped OCSP response directly to the initial SSL/TLS handshake from the web server, alleviating performance load on the CA.

Wildcard Certificate

A public key digital certificate applied to secure a domain and all of its subordinate subdomains under a single root designation.

Subject Alternative Name (SAN)

A digital certificate attribute enabling one certificate to protect multiple distinct domain names and host configurations simultaneously.

PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail)

A common Base64 ASCII-encoded certificate format that can store multiple certificates and private keys within file extensions such as .pem, .crt, .cer, and .key.