IPA FE Subject A sample Question 34
A question IPA Japan published in 基本情報技術者試験 科目A サンプル問題 問34, translated into English. ITPEC is based on the same exams.
Which of the following corresponds to fuzzing?
Explanation
Feeding software problem-causing data to find vulnerabilities — fuzzing is testing with large numbers of abnormal inputs.
A fuzzer generates many inputs the software was not designed for, such as overlong strings, invalid values and broken file formats, sends them to the program and watches how it behaves. Crashes, hangs and abnormal output point to flaws such as buffer overflows that an attacker could exploit, so fuzzing finds vulnerabilities before release.
Answer (c)
Why not others:
- •(a) — sending FIN packets and watching the replies is a port scan (a FIN scan) that finds the services running on a server
- •(b) — analyzing a server’s logs and command histories to detect file tampering is host-based intrusion detection
- •(d) — matching captured packets against registered attack patterns is signature-based network intrusion detection
Key rule: Fuzzing stresses a program’s input handling with many abnormal inputs and watches for failures; scanners and intrusion detection systems observe systems instead.
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This question comes from the past questions IPA Japan publishes, translated into English by ITPEC Practice. ITPEC Practice is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with IPA or ITPEC. See the original paper (PDF) or Report an issue.