In addition to what you’re reading right now, this book comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that includes tips to help you prepare for the PenTest+ certification exam. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and type CompTIA PenTest+ Certification For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.
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Where to Go from Here
The CompTIA PenTest+ certification is one of the most popular security certifications for individuals new to ethical hacking and penetration testing. After you pass the CompTIA PenTest+ certification exam, you might want to continue your certification path by studying for the following certifications from CompTIA:
Security+: If you haven’t completed CompTIA’s Security+ certification, this could be the next step. Most candidates complete Security+ before doing PenTest+, but if you haven’t, there is no problem going back to do it. Security+ covers IT security topics that help you secure company assets.
CySA+: The CySA+ certification is a vendor-neutral certification that ensures the candidate knows how to respond to security incidents by covering security analytics, intrusion detection, and incident response.
CASP+: The final security certification in the CompTIA security track is the CASP+ certification, which covers advanced technical IT security topics.
Pre-Assessment
The following questions are designed to test you on areas of the CompTIA PenTest+ certification exam that you may need to focus on when reading through this book. Take time to review each question to come up with the best answer for each question. Be sure to verify your work with the pre-assessment answers that follow, and use the chapter reference given to learn more about the topic related to the question.
Questions
1. You are performing a penetration test for a large customer. You are using Nmap to determine the ports that are open on the target systems. What phase of the penetration testing process are you currently on?
(A) Reporting and communication
(B) Attacks and exploits
(C) Planning and scoping
(D) Information gathering and vulnerability identification
2. You are preparing to perform a penetration test for a customer. What type of document does the customer typically have the penetration tester sign before the penetration test begins?
(A) Authorization letter
(B) Service-level agreement
(C) Non-disclosure agreement
(D) Master service agreement
3. Which of the following penetration tools are considered OSINT tools? (Choose two.)
(A) Nmap
(B) Recon-ng
(C) Hydra
(D) Metasploit
(E) Maltego
4. You are in the discovery phase of a penetration test and would like to do a port scan on the network, but not perform a ping operation with the port scan. What Nmap switch would you use to disable pings with the port scan?
(A) -Pn
(B) -p
(C) -sP
(D) -sT
5. You are looking to discover vulnerabilities on a group of systems that are target systems for your penetration test. What tools would you use to identify vulnerabilities in the systems? (Choose two.)
(A) OpenVAS
(B) Nessus
(C) Hydra
(D) Metasploit
(E) Nmap
6. During a penetration test you are looking to perform a MiTM attack. Which of the following tools would you use to perform the attack?
(A) Hydra
(B) Metasploit
(C) arpspoof
(D) John
7. You are performing a penetration test on a wireless network. You would like to deauthenticate the clients from the access point. What tool would you use?
(A) Aircrack-ng
(B) Aireplay-ng
(C) Airodump-ng
(D) Deauth-ng
8. While performing a penetration test on a wireless network, you decide to try to brute force the WPS pin on the wireless access point. What command would you use in Kali Linux?
(A) aircrack-ng
(B) mimikatz
(C) reaver
(D) wpscrack-ng
9. You are assessing the security of a web application running on a web server within the DMZ. Which of the following represents an example of a command injection attack?
(A) http://site/showData.php?id=1;phpinfo()
(B) http://site/purchase.aspx?redirect=confirmation.aspx
(C) http://site/prodt.php?id=5;update%20products%20set%20price=.50
(D) http://site/showData.php?dir=%3Bcat%20/etc/passwd
10. You are performing a penetration test for a customer and have exploited a system and gained a meterpreter session. What post-exploitation command was used to obtain the following output?
Admin:500:b45a8125648cbddf2c4272c:bddf2c4272cb45a8125648cGuest:501:b45a8125648cbddf2c4272c:bddf2c4272cb45a8125648ctestUser:1024:b45a8125648cbddf2c4272c:bddf2c4272cb45a8125648c
(A) hashdump
(B) hydra
(C) kill av
(D) truncate
11. You are assessing the security of