GSLC · Question #33
Which of the following types of attacks cannot be prevented by a firewall? Each correct answer represents a complete solution. Choose all that apply.
The correct answer is B. Phishing attack C. Shoulder surfing attack D. URL obfuscation attack. Firewalls filter network traffic at the perimeter but cannot prevent attacks that exploit human behavior, physical access, or application-layer deception techniques.
Question
Which of the following types of attacks cannot be prevented by a firewall? Each correct answer represents a complete solution. Choose all that apply.
Options
- APing flood attack
- BPhishing attack
- CShoulder surfing attack
- DURL obfuscation attack
How the community answered
(44 responses)- A23% (10)
- B77% (34)
Why each option
Firewalls filter network traffic at the perimeter but cannot prevent attacks that exploit human behavior, physical access, or application-layer deception techniques.
A ping flood is an ICMP-based volumetric network attack that firewalls can mitigate by blocking or rate-limiting ICMP echo-request traffic at the network perimeter.
Phishing exploits human psychology through deceptive emails or websites to steal credentials; because it targets users rather than network ports or protocols, a firewall has no mechanism to inspect or block this social engineering vector.
Shoulder surfing is a physical-world attack where an adversary visually observes a user entering sensitive information; no network security device can detect or prevent an attacker who is physically present.
URL obfuscation disguises malicious links to trick users into visiting harmful sites; while next-generation firewalls can perform some URL filtering, classic firewalls cannot analyze the semantic intent of URLs to detect obfuscation at the user-interaction layer.
Concept tested: Firewall limitations against non-network-layer attacks
Source: https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-41/rev-1/final
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