Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH v11) — Question 31

Sam is a penetration tester hired by Inception Tech, a security organization. He was asked to perform port scanning on a target host in the network. While performing the given task, Sam sends FIN/ACK probes and determines that an RST packet is sent in response by the target host, indicating that the port is closed.
What is the port scanning technique used by Sam to discover open ports?

Answer options

• A. Xmas scan
• B. IDLE/IPID header scan
• C. TCP Maimon scan
• D. ACK flag probe scan

Correct answer: C

Explanation

The TCP Maimon scan is effective for identifying closed ports by sending FIN/ACK packets and interpreting RST responses. The other techniques, such as the Xmas scan and ACK flag probe scan, employ different methods to probe port status and do not specifically yield the same response pattern as the TCP Maimon scan.