Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH v12) — Question 59

While testing a web application in development, you notice that the web server does not properly ignore the “dot dot slash” (../) character string and instead returns the file listing of a folder higher up in the folder structure of the server.
What kind of attack is possible in this scenario?

Answer options

• A. Cross-site scripting
• B. SQL injection
• C. Denial of service
• D. Directory traversal

Correct answer: D

Explanation

The correct answer is Directory traversal because the vulnerability allows attackers to access restricted directories and files outside the intended directory structure. Cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and Denial of service are different types of attacks that do not directly involve the server's file system access in this manner.