Threats and Attacks in Cloud Environments CSE Practice Questions (Page 8)

Questions 36–40

1. 36expert · hard

   A company's cloud administrator receives a phone call from someone claiming to be from the cloud provider's support team. The caller asks the administrator to verify their password and provide a one-time passcode to 'resolve a security issue'. The administrator complies. Shortly after, the administrator's account is used to create a new admin user. What is the most likely attack, and what control would have prevented it?

   • ASession hijacking via a man-in-the-middle attack. Use a VPN for all administrative access.
   • BInsider threat from a disgruntled employee. Conduct background checks on all administrators.
   • CMalware on the administrator's computer. Run an antivirus scan and isolate the machine.
   • DSocial engineering (vishing) leading to account takeover. Implement a strict policy that support will never ask for passwords or passcodes, and require out-of-band verification.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
2. 37expert · hard

   A company runs a latency-sensitive application in a single cloud region. They are experiencing intermittent DDoS attacks that cause brief outages. The security team is evaluating mitigation options. Which solution provides the best balance of availability, cost, and complexity?

   • ADeploy the application across multiple regions behind a global load balancer with DDoS protection and auto-scaling.
   • BPurchase a dedicated DDoS mitigation appliance and place it in the company's on-premises data center.
   • CIncrease the instance size of the application servers to handle more traffic.
   • DUse a CDN to cache all content, including dynamic API responses.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
4. 38foundation · easy

   What is a resource exhaustion attack in a cloud environment?

   • AAn attack that exploits a vulnerability in a hypervisor to gain control of the host
   • BAn attack that consumes all available compute, memory, or storage resources to deny service to legitimate users
   • CAn attack that intercepts network traffic between cloud services
   • DAn attack that steals credentials via phishing to access cloud resources
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
5. 39foundation · easy

   What is session hijacking in a cloud context?

   • AAn attacker installs malware on a user's device
   • BAn attacker guesses a user's password through brute force
   • CAn attacker steals a valid session token to impersonate a legitimate user
   • DAn attacker sends a fraudulent email to obtain credentials
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
6. 40application · medium

   A company's cloud environment experienced a breach. The investigation reveals that an attacker used a valid user's credentials to access the cloud console from an IP address in a foreign country, and the user's password had been reused from a previous breach. Which combination of controls would most effectively reduce the risk of this type of attack recurring?

   • AImplement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users and use a password manager to generate unique passwords for each service.
   • BEnforce a policy that requires users to change their passwords every 30 days and disable accounts after 3 failed login attempts.
   • CUse a cloud access security broker (CASB) to monitor for anomalous login behavior and automatically revoke sessions that appear risky.
   • DRestrict access to the cloud console to only the corporate VPN IP range and require users to use a hardware token for VPN access.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first