Computer Security Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Correct answer: Code Red

Code Red was a worm that spread through Microsoft IIS web servers in 2001. AVG, Avast and McAfee are all antivirus products, which makes Code Red the odd one out.

Answer: D

Correct answer: All of the above

Each of the three threatens an electronic payment system in its own way: a virus can corrupt transaction data, a worm can consume the bandwidth the system depends on, and a trojan can capture card details or credentials while pretending to be legitimate software.

Answer: A

Correct answer: macro

A macro virus lives in the macro language of a document rather than in an executable, so it travels wherever documents travel - which in practice means email, freely and among very large numbers of users. It is also platform independent for the same reason, since it needs only the application, not the operating system.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Phishing scams

Phishing means impersonating a bank, a service or a colleague in order to persuade the victim to hand over passwords or card details. Spyware takes information without asking rather than by asking under a false name, and phishing trips is not a term.

Answer: A

Correct answer: hard to assure identity of user on a remote system

Authentication is the problem of establishing that a user really is who the user claims to be, and it is genuinely hard across a network, where the system sees only the messages it is sent. Insertion and modification are kinds of attack on data rather than the process of establishing identity.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Computer Virus

Self-replication is the defining property of a virus: it copies itself into other programs, and those copies spread when the host programs are run or shared. A pen drive can carry a virus but does not replicate anything itself.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Boot infectors

A boot sector virus writes itself into the boot record, so it is loaded before the operating system every time the machine starts and can destroy data from a position where nothing is yet in place to stop it. A stealth virus is defined by hiding from detection, which is a different property, and a trojan does not replicate at all.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Spyware

A key logger records every keystroke and sends the record elsewhere, which makes it a form of spyware - software whose purpose is to gather information about the user without consent. Firmware is code stored in hardware and has nothing to do with it.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Firewall

A firewall inspects traffic entering and leaving the machine and blocks connections that are not permitted, which is what keeps an intruder from reaching the computer at all. Antivirus software deals with malicious code already present rather than with the connection.

Answer: C

Correct answer: unauthorised access

A firewall controls which connections may be made to and from a machine, so what it prevents is access by people and programs that have no business there. It does not inspect files for viruses, which is a separate job.