CC Exam Dumps - CC - Certified in Cybersecurity

John the Ripper is a well-known password cracking tool used to test the strength of passwords by performing brute-force, dictionary, and hybrid attacks. It is commonly used by security professionals during penetration testing and password audits to identify weak credentials.

Burp Suite is a web application testing tool, Nslookup is a DNS query utility, and Wireshark is a packet analyzer. None of these tools are designed specifically for password cracking.

While John the Ripper can be used maliciously, it is also widely used defensively to improve password policies and enforce strong authentication practices. Its existence highlights the importance of strong passwords, hashing, salting, and multi-factor authentication.

This scenario describes areplay attack, in which an attacker captures valid authentication data and reuses it later to gain unauthorized access. Juli is passively monitoring network traffic, capturing credentials as they are transmitted, and planning to reuse them in a future attack.

Replay attacks often occur when authentication mechanisms do not use protections such as encryption, nonces, timestamps, or session tokens. If credentials are transmitted in clear text or without replay protection, attackers can intercept and reuse them without needing to crack passwords.

Brute-force and dictionary attacks involve guessing credentials, not capturing them. Social engineering relies on human manipulation rather than technical interception.

Replay attacks highlight the importance of secure protocols such as TLS, encrypted authentication exchanges, challenge-response mechanisms, and one-time passwords. NIST authentication guidance explicitly identifies replay resistance as a critical requirement for secure authentication systems.

Zero Trust assumes no implicit trust and requires continuous verification of users, devices, and access requests, regardless of location.

Aturnstileis a physical access control device designed to allow only one individual to pass at a time. Turnstiles are commonly used to prevent tailgating and unauthorized entry in offices, transit stations, and secure facilities. Unlike mantraps, turnstiles typically allow one-way movement and do not lock a person inside an enclosed space.

Backups are recovery controls because they restore data and systems after failures, attacks, or disasters.

AVirtual Private Network (VPN)creates an encrypted tunnel across untrusted networks such as the Internet. VPNs protect confidentiality and integrity by encrypting authentication credentials and data traffic.

“Something you know” authentication refers to knowledge-based credentials such as passwords, PINs, or passphrases. This is widely regarded as the weakest form of authentication because it is highly susceptible to compromise through phishing, brute-force attacks, credential stuffing, shoulder surfing, and social engineering.

Passwords can be guessed, reused, written down, or stolen through malware and data breaches. Users often choose weak or reused passwords, further reducing security. Even when password complexity rules are enforced, attackers frequently bypass them using previously leaked credentials.

In contrast, “something you have” (tokens, smart cards), “something you are” (biometrics), and biometric authentication provide stronger assurance because they are harder to steal or replicate. Modern security standards recommend combining factors using multi-factor authentication (MFA) to reduce reliance on knowledge-based authentication alone.

NIST SP 800-63 explicitly discourages password-only authentication for sensitive systems, emphasizing that “something you know” should be augmented with additional factors whenever possible.

Encryption ensures confidentiality by rendering data unreadable to unauthorized users, whether at rest or in transit.