Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH v11) — Question 236

A computer science student needs to fill some information into a secured Adobe PDF job application that was received from a prospective employer. Instead of requesting a new document that allowed the forms to be completed, the student decides to write a script that pulls passwords from a list of commonly used passwords to try against the secured PDF until the correct password is found or the list is exhausted. Which cryptography attack is the student attempting?

Answer options

• A. Man-in-the-middle attack
• B. Brute-force attack
• C. Dictionary attack
• D. Session hijacking

Correct answer: C

Explanation

The correct answer is C, Dictionary attack, because the student is using a predefined list of common passwords to attempt to unlock the PDF. A Brute-force attack would involve trying every possible combination of passwords, while a Man-in-the-middle attack and Session hijacking are unrelated to password cracking.