Malware

Excellent1

Question for those of you who have passed this exam: Did you find it necessary or wise to memorize many famous (infamous) malware types from days gone by for the purpose of this exam?

Darril's book mentioned the ILoveYou worm in passing, I believe, but I didn't see anything else about specific malware attacks by name. In contrast, when taking the Certblaster, ExamFarce, and Labsim test exams, every one of them has at least one question regarding prior malware by type, e.g., "What was Code Red?". I'm just curious if this is something I'll need to know for the real exam or not. Any feedback would be appreciated.

It's not a huge deal, as I'm fairly confident that I'll pass this exam regardless, but I just don't want to overlook something that might help me for the exam. Thanks.

Unforg1ven

Simple Answer : NO.

Please know all the malware types including their characteristics inside and out.

Paperlantern

Yeah there wasn't any memorization of actual malware releases or infections. ONLY WHAT malware is and its characteristics. Same go with the other types of infections or attacks (logic bomb, spyware, virus, trojan horse, etc).

Excellent1

Paperlantern wrote: »

Yeah there wasn't any memorization of actual malware releases or infections. ONLY WHAT malware is and its characteristics. Same go with the other types of infections or attacks (logic bomb, spyware, virus, trojan horse, etc).

I had assumed as much from the objectives, but I was confused that the practice exam engines were all asking about Code Red, Iloveyou, etc and wanting to know the malware classification. I appreciate the confirmation that specific malware outbreaks aren't on the exam. Thanks, guys.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this exam. I'm scoring high 90's on the exams I'm taking now, which is why I'm nervous. I've only been studying for just over a week, so I know there is much more to be done.

On a side note for those WGU students that might happen to read this, the CompTIA book that WGU sends out has some really good lab exercises with certificates and using some of the cryptography tools. From what I've read, most WGU students ignore these books, but I'm finding a lot of good info that is a bit more in depth than Darril's book.

Don't get me wrong, Darril's book is the prime resource I would recommend, but it's not perfect. For example, Darril's coverage of DES doesn't mention that it's a 64-bit block cipher. He mentiones that it uses a 56 bit key and that it isn't much used, and that's about the extent of it. One of the first Labsim exam questions I missed was regarding the block size of DES. I checked Darril's book and no love. Regardless, the CompTIA book is pretty useful for some of the filler information to suplement what you might need. Just a comment to those that have that resource to view.

erpadmin

A better resource for exercises would come from the LabSim available to WGU students for Security+. I did look at the ILT guide and I see it's waaaaaay too general. I did glance at it briefly and found the book to be "all hat and no cattle."

An example of one thing I was curious about that I was 99% wouldn't be on the exam was "SkipJack" (tested on Transcenders). It is much more important to focus on stuff like DES, 3DES, AES, RSA, etc, what hashing is (and what it isn't).

If you are searching on something much more in-depth, get a nice CISSP book. (Like Shon Harris' All in One guide). Of course, you'll want to pass Security+ first so you can just get that out of the way (and sounds like you are ready for the exam, in all honesty, Excellent). Darril's book is definitely not an in-depth book on IT Security, but it is 101% enough to do what it was written to be intended to do...pass Security+.

CISSP, PMP, and maybe even CCNA are certs I will take (or rather, be interested in taking) post-WGU. I got enough on my plate just trying to graduate, but the PMP is most likely the first out of those three (or two...CCNA isn't something I need for my career...more of a "I just want it to have it" kinda deal).

Excellent1

erpadmin wrote: »

A better resource for exercises would come from the LabSim available to WGU students for Security+. I did look at the ILT guide and I see it's waaaaaay too general. I did glance at it briefly and found the book to be "all hat and no cattle."

An example of one thing I was curious about that I was 99% wouldn't be on the exam was "SkipJack" (tested on Transcenders). It is much more important to focus on stuff like DES, 3DES, AES, RSA, etc, what hashing is (and what it isn't).

If you are searching on something much more in-depth, get a nice CISSP book. (Like Shon Harris' All in One guide). Of course, you'll want to pass Security+ first so you can just get that out of the way (and sounds like you are ready for the exam, in all honesty, Excellent). Darril's book is definitely not an in-depth book on IT Security, but it is 101% enough to do what it was written to be intended to do...pass Security+.

CISSP, PMP, and maybe even CCNA are certs I will take (or rather, be interested in taking) post-WGU. I got enough on my plate just trying to graduate, but the PMP is most likely the first out of those three (or two...CCNA isn't something I need for my career...more of a "I just want it to have it" kinda deal).

I appreciate the resource suggestions. I will be checking them out. While I agree that Darril's book was meant to be an introduction, I was surprised to find that I found most of the topics extremely interesting. I had never before considered what exactly occurred during an asymmetric key exchange, for example. Rather than being bored to tears by it, as I was afraid I'd be, I actually found it really fun to learn. The cryptography section of this book was really the first thing I've encountered so far at WGU that was actually "new" to me, so I'm having fun with it.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, as always.