CompTIA PenTest+ (PT0-002) — Question 71

The attacking machine is on the same LAN segment as the target host during an internal penetration test. Which of the following commands will BEST enable the attacker to conduct host discovery and write the discovery to files without returning results of the attack machine?

Answer options

• A. nmap -sn -n -exclude 10.1.1.15 10.1.1.0/24 -oA target_txt
• B. nmap -iR 10 -n -oX out.xml | grep "Nmap" | cut -d "" -f5 > live-hosts.txt
• C. nmap -Pn -sV -O -iL target.txt -oA target_text_Service
• D. nmap -sS -Pn -n -iL target.txt -oA target_txt1

Correct answer: A

Explanation

The command in option A uses the '-sn' flag for host discovery, which allows the attacker to scan the specified network while excluding their own IP address, and the results are saved to files. Options B, C, and D do not focus on host discovery in the same effective manner or do not handle output as required, making them less suitable for this particular task.