A University uses a card transaction system that allows students to purchase goods using their student ID . Students can put money on their ID at terminals throughout the campus. The security…

Question

Options

• ANotify the transaction system vendor of the security vulnerability that was discovered.
• BUse a protocol analyzer to reverse engineer the transaction system's protocol.
• CContact the computer science students and threaten disciplinary action if they continue their actions.
• DInstall a NIDS in front of all the transaction system terminals.

• A
  11% (3)
• B
  82% (23)
• C
  4% (1)
• D
  4% (1)

Explanation

To reproduce what the students are doing, the administrator needs to understand the proprietary protocol used by the card transaction system's terminals. Using a protocol analyzer (e.g., Wireshark) to capture network traffic between a terminal and the back-end system allows the administrator to reverse engineer the protocol - identifying how legitimate transactions are structured and how the students may be manipulating them. This is the correct technical approach to both understand and reproduce the attack. Option A (notify the vendor) is appropriate as a long-term remediation step but does not help the administrator reproduce or understand the attack. Option C (threatening students) is a disciplinary action that does not help the administrator understand the vulnerability. Option D (installing a NIDS) is a detection and monitoring measure - it may detect future attacks but does not help reproduce the current one or understand the protocol vulnerability.

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