Which of the following attack types is occurring?

A security analyst is reviewing the following log entries to identify anomalous activity:

Which of the following attack types is occurring?
A . Directory traversal
B . SQL injection
C . Buffer overflow
D . Cross-site scripting

View Answer

Answer: A

Explanation:

A directory traversal attack is a type of web application attack that exploits insufficient input validation or improper configuration to access files or directories that are outside the intended scope of the web server. The log entries given in the question show several requests that contain “…/” sequences in the URL, which indicate an attempt to move up one level in the directory structure. For example, the request “/images/…/…/etc/passwd” tries to access the /etc/passwd file, which contains user account information on Linux systems. If successful, this attack could allow an attacker to read, modify, or execute files on the web server that are not meant to be accessible.