CAS-005 Exam Dumps - CompTIA SecurityX Certification Exam

The question focuses oninternet-facing hosts, implying external exposure. CVSS scores, remote executability, and exploitavailability guide prioritization. Server2 (205.1.3.5, CVSS 6.5, Bind Server) has a public IP, suggesting it’s internet-facing, unlike Server1 and Server4 (192.168.x.x, private IPs). Server3 (207.1.5.7, CVSS 5.5) is also public but has a lower score and risk compared to Server2’s proof-of-concept (POC) exploit. Server2’s Bind Server (DNS) role is critical and commonly targeted, making it the priority.

Option A:Server1 (CVSS 7.5) is private, not internet-facing.

Option B:Server2 (CVSS 6.5) is internet-facing with an exploit POC, warranting immediate patching.

Option C:Server3 (CVSS 5.5) is internet-facing but less severe.

Option D:Server4 (CVSS 9.8) is critical but private, not internet-facing.

The best location to test a newly released feature for an internal application, without affecting the production environment, is the staging environment. Here’s a detailed explanation:

Staging Environment: This environment closely mirrors the production environment in terms of hardware, software, configurations, and settings. It serves as a final testing ground before deploying changes to production. Testing in the staging environment ensures that the new feature will behave as expected in the actual production setup.

Isolation fromProduction: The staging environment is isolated from production, which means any issues arising from the new feature will not impact the live users or the integrity of the production data. This aligns with best practices in change management and risk mitigation.

Realistic Testing: Since the staging environment replicates the production environment, it provides realistic testing conditions. This helps in identifying potential issues that might not be apparent in a development or testing environment, which often have different configurations and workloads.

Based on the security policy that any publicly available server must be patched within 12 hours after a patch is released, the securityanalyst should patch Host 1 first. Here’s why:

Public Availability: Host 1 is externally available, making it accessible from the internet. Publicly available servers are at higher risk of being targeted by attackers, especially when a zero-day vulnerability is known.

Exposure to Threats: Host 1 has IIS installed and is publicly accessible, increasing its exposure to potential exploitation. Patching this host first reduces the risk of a successful attack.

Prioritization of Critical Assets: According to best practices, assets that are exposed to higher risks should be prioritized for patching to mitigate potential threats promptly.

The vulnerability lies in line [10], where the function strcpy(transmit, input) is used. The strcpy function does not perform boundary checking when copying strings. Since input is defined with a size of 256 characters and transmit only has 20 characters allocated, the strcpy operation will cause a buffer overflow when the contents of input exceed the allocated size of transmit. This creates a significant security vulnerability, as attackers can overwrite adjacent memory, potentially injecting malicious code or altering program execution.

Lines [02], [04], [07], and [08] are not inherently vulnerable by themselves. Line [04] defines the oversized input, but the vulnerability only materializes when combined with the unsafe copy in line [10]. Secure coding practices recommend using safer alternatives like strncpy, which includes a length parameter, or implementing runtime checks to ensure the destination buffer size is not exceeded.

Thus, the vulnerable line that must be changed is line [10], where strcpy is used.

The code snippet exposes a hardcoded access token in a public repository. According to SecurityX CAS-005 secure coding best practices, the immediate action must be to revoke the exposed secret to prevent unauthorized access.

Removing the code from public view without revoking the token leaves the secret still usable by any attacker who has already seen or copied it.

SAST scanning would detect the issue but not mitigate it immediately.

Security awareness training is a long-term prevention measure but does not fix the immediate exposure.Revoking the secret first stops ongoing exploitation, after which the code can be removed, and preventative measures can be implemented.

Qualitative risk assessment is used when quantitative data (monetary loss, exact downtime cost, RTO) is unavailable or unreliable. The SecurityX CAS-005 GRC objectives note that qualitative methods rely on expert judgment, likelihood scales, and impact ratings rather than financial calculations. In this case, insufficient metrics rule out quantitative analysis.

Option A (work experience) is irrelevant to the choice of assessment type.

Option C (risk register) supports tracking, not selecting the assessment method.

Option D describes a quantitative goal, which is not possible with the given lack of metrics.