CompTIA CySA+ (CS0-001) — Question 30

A cybersecurity analyst is currently investigating a server outage. The analyst has discovered the following value was entered for the username: 0xbfff601a. Which of the following attacks may be occurring?

Answer options

• A. Buffer overflow attack
• B. Man-in-the-middle attack
• C. Smurf attack
• D. Format string attack
• E. Denial of service attack

Correct answer: D

Explanation

The value 0xbfff601a suggests a potential format string attack, as it is often associated with exploiting vulnerabilities in how data is formatted and handled in memory. A buffer overflow attack is related but does not directly correlate with the hexadecimal format seen here. The other options, including man-in-the-middle, smurf, and denial of service attacks, do not relate to the specifics of the username input in this context.