An organization has hired a penetration tester to test the security of its ten web servers. The penetration tester is able to gain root/administrative access in several servers by exploiting…

A honeypot is designed to detect and learn about attacks by luring them, not to prevent the successful exploitation of unnecessary services running on production web servers.

The exploited services (SMTP, POP, DNS, FTP, Telnet, IMAP) are typically not essential for a web server's core function, and disabling them directly reduces the attack surface by eliminating entry points for known vulnerabilities.

Implementing transport layer security (TLS) encrypts communications and provides authentication but does not inherently fix vulnerabilities within the services themselves or address the risk of running unnecessary services like Telnet.

Increasing application event logging enhances detection and forensics capabilities but does not prevent the initial exploitation of vulnerabilities found in unnecessary services.