Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH v12) — Question 111

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 correct answer is C, TCP Maimon scan, which utilizes FIN/ACK probes to ascertain port status. The response of an RST packet indicates that the port is closed. The other methods, such as Xmas scan and ACK flag probe scan, do not use the same probing technique to determine open ports effectively.