ISC2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) Practice Question
While investigating a potential compromise, you review several Amazon GuardDuty findings related to a Windows-based EC2 web server. The findings highlight repeated "PowerShell-related behavior" triggered through WMI event subscriptions, unexpected outbound connections to a known command-and-control (C2) domain, and the absence of any suspicious binaries after an exhaustive anti-malware scan of the instance's EBS volume. Based on these observations, which category of malicious code most likely explains the attacker's technique?
A ransomware variant that replaces the master boot record (MBR) and displays ransom notes at startup
A kernel-mode rootkit that installs unauthorized drivers to conceal malicious processes from the OS
Fileless malware that operates exclusively in memory and leverages native PowerShell and WMI functionality
A polymorphic file-infecting virus that appends malicious code to executable files on the system volume
The attacker's commands are executed from memory using legitimate administration tools (PowerShell via WMI) without creating or modifying files on disk. This is characteristic of fileless malware, which lives in memory and abuses built-in OS components to maintain persistence and communicate with C2 infrastructure, allowing it to evade traditional signature-based anti-virus scans that focus on files.
A polymorphic file-infecting virus would leave altered executables on disk; ransomware that overwrites the master boot record would be readily detected through modified disk sectors and ransom notes; a kernel-mode rootkit typically installs drivers or patches kernel structures, also leaving artifacts on disk or in driver lists. None of these align with the log-only, memory-resident activity GuardDuty observed, making fileless malware the best explanation.
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ISC2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP)
Systems and Application Security
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