312-50v13 ECCouncil Certified Ethical Hacker Exam (CEHv13) Free Practice Exam Questions (2026 Updated)
Prepare effectively for your ECCouncil 312-50v13 Certified Ethical Hacker Exam (CEHv13) certification with our extensive collection of free, high-quality practice questions. Each question is designed to mirror the actual exam format and objectives, complete with comprehensive answers and detailed explanations. Our materials are regularly updated for 2026, ensuring you have the most current resources to build confidence and succeed on your first attempt.
As a Certified Ethical Hacker evaluating a smart city project (traffic lights, public Wi-Fi, and water management), you find anomalous IoT network logs showing high-volume data exchange between a specific traffic light and an external IP address. Further investigation reveals an unexpectedly open port on that traffic light. What should be your subsequent course of action?
A smart building management company in Seattle, Washington deploys wireless door sensors and badge-based access systems throughout its corporate headquarters. During a security assessment, an analyst captures legitimate radio transmissions between employee access badges and the entry control units.
Later that evening, without modifying or decrypting the original communication, the analyst retransmits the previously captured signal toward a secured entrance. The access control system accepts the transmission as valid and unlocks the door, even though the legitimate badge is not present.
Determine the attack technique demonstrated in this assessment.
In the bustling tech hub of Boston, Massachusetts, ethical hacker Zara Nguyen dives into the digital fortifications of CloudCrafter, a US-based platform hosting web applications for small businesses. Tasked with probing the application’s input processing, Zara submits specially crafted inputs to a server administration panel. Her tests uncover a severe vulnerability: the system performs unintended operations at the system level, enabling access to restricted server resources. Further scrutiny reveals the flaw lies in the application’s failure to sanitize user input passed to system-level execution, not in altering directory service queries, injecting newline characters, or targeting cloud-specific environments. Dedicated to strengthening the platform, Zara drafts a precise report to guide CloudCrafter’s security team toward urgent fixes.
Which injection attack type is Zara most likely exploiting in CloudCrafter’s web application?
A penetration tester is tasked with assessing the security of an Android mobile application that stores sensitive user data. The tester finds that the application does not use proper encryption to secure data at rest. What is the most effective way to exploit this vulnerability?
Fleet vehicles with smart locking systems were compromised after attackers captured unique signals from key fobs. What should the security team prioritize to confirm and prevent this attack?
As a cybersecurity analyst conducting passive reconnaissance, you aim to gather information without interacting directly with the target system. Which technique is least likely to assist in this process?
A hacker is analyzing a system that uses two rounds of symmetric encryption with different keys. To speed up key recovery, the attacker encrypts the known plaintext with all possible values of the first key and stores the intermediate ciphertexts. Then, they decrypt the final ciphertext using all possible values of the second key and compare the results to the stored values. Which cryptanalytic method does this approach represent?
A company hires a hacker to test its network security by simulating real-world attacks. The hacker has permission and operates within legal boundaries. What is this type of hacker called?
In a highly secure online banking environment, customers report unauthorized access to their accounts despite robust authentication controls. Investigation reveals attackers are using advanced session hijacking techniques to perform fraudulent transactions. Which advanced session-hijacking attack, resembling a scenario-based attack, presents the greatest challenge to detect and mitigate?
Michael, an ethical hacker at a New York-based e-commerce company, is evaluating the security of their online payment system after a recent incident where fraudulent transactions went undetected. His investigation reveals that the system uses an asymmetric encryption algorithm to ensure the authenticity of payment confirmations. He finds that the algorithm employs a public-key cryptosystem, where the sender signs the transaction with a private key, and the recipient verifies it using a corresponding public key located in a directory. During his test, Michael intercepts a signed message and notices that the algorithm supports modular exponentiation for generating digital signatures, a process critical for verifying the identity of the signatory. He aims to assess if the algorithm’s configuration could be vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack due to its key structure.
Which asymmetric encryption algorithm should Michael identify as the one used by the payment system?
A Linux system allows SSH login using deprecated ciphers. What risk exists?
As an Ethical Hacker, you have been asked to test an application’s vulnerability to SQL injection. During testing, you discover an entry field that appears susceptible. However, the backend database is unknown, and regular SQL injection techniques have failed to produce useful information. Which advanced SQL injection technique should you apply next?
During an authorized engagement at IronClad Financial Services in Charlotte, the red team successfully exploits a weakness and obtains administrative access to a critical server. After achieving this objective, the team installs a backdoor mechanism to ensure continued access even if the original vulnerability is remediated. The team documents this activity as part of demonstrating long-term adversary behavior within the approved scope.
Within the CEH ethical hacking framework, which phase does this activity represent?
An organization uses SHA-256 for data integrity checks but still experiences unauthorized data modification. Which cryptographic tool can help resolve this issue?
During a network security audit at Jefferson National Bank in Richmond, Virginia, ethical hacker Thomas Reed is tasked with identifying vulnerabilities in employee login processes on VLAN 20, which connects client services workstations to the customer account database server. He sets up a Wireshark instance on a monitoring workstation configured in mirror mode behind a managed switch to capture traffic. His goal is to detect unencrypted authentication credentials transmitted over HTTP during login sessions. Which Wireshark feature should Thomas use to isolate and analyze these credentials in real time, and how does it assist him?
A penetration tester suspects that a web application ' s user profile page is vulnerable to SQL injection, as it uses the userID parameter in SQL queries without proper sanitization. Which technique should the tester use to confirm the vulnerability?
During a strategic security briefing at Meridian Global Analytics in Washington, D.C., executives review a series of coordinated activities targeting national infrastructure. These activities include manipulating digital media to influence public perception, disrupting communication networks, and degrading critical systems to weaken institutional stability without direct conventional military engagement.
What form of conflict best describes this type of coordinated activity?
In Boston, Massachusetts, network administrator Daniel Carter is monitoring the IT infrastructure of New England Insurance, a prominent firm, after receiving alerts about sluggish system performance. While reviewing traffic patterns, Daniel observes an unusual volume of concurrent requests overwhelming critical servers. To validate his suspicion of a session hijacking attempt, he begins capturing and reviewing live network traffic to identify unauthorized session behaviors before escalating to the security team.
What detection method should Daniel use to confirm the session hijacking attack in this scenario?
Which countermeasure best mitigates brute-force attacks on Bluetooth SSP?
In an enterprise environment, the network security team detects unusual behavior suggesting advanced sniffing techniques exploiting legacy protocols to intercept sensitive communications. Which of the following sniffing-related techniques presents the greatest challenge to detect and neutralize, potentially compromising confidential enterprise data?
During a covert red team engagement, a penetration tester is tasked with identifying live hosts in a target organization’s internal subnet (10.0.0.0/24) without triggering intrusion detection systems (IDS). To remain undetected, the tester opts to use the command nmap -sn -PE 10.0.0.0/24, which results in several " Host is up " responses, even though the organization’s IDS is tuned to detect high-volume scans. After the engagement, the client reviews the logs and is surprised that the scan was not flagged. What allowed the scan to complete without triggering alerts?
At a Chicago-based healthcare provider, security engineer Emily reviews the migration of critical applications to a cloud service. During her evaluation, she notes that administrators can provision new servers, increase storage, and expand compute power instantly through a web dashboard without any manual involvement from the cloud provider. Which NIST-defined characteristic of cloud computing best explains this capability?
In Denver, Colorado, ethical hacker Sophia Nguyen is hired by Rocky Mountain Insurance to assess the effectiveness of their network security controls. During her penetration test, she attempts to evade the company ' s firewall by fragmenting malicious packets to avoid detection. The IT team, aware of such techniques, has implemented a security measure to analyze packet contents beyond standard headers. Sophia ' s efforts are thwarted as the system identifies and blocks her fragmented packets.
Which security measure is the IT team most likely using to counter Sophia ' s firewall evasion attempt?
A red team operator wants to obtain credentials from a Windows machine without touching LSASS memory due to security controls and Credential Guard. They use SSPI to generate NetNTLM responses in the logged-in user context and collect those responses for offline cracking. Which attack technique is being used?
A Nessus scan reports a CVSS 9.0 SSH vulnerability allowing remote code execution. What should be immediately prioritized?
You are an ethical hacker at RedOak Cyber Solutions, contracted to perform a penetration test for MetroHealth Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. While assessing the hospital ' s appointment booking portal, you craft and submit multiple malicious inputs into the patient search field. One of your payloads successfully manipulates the backend query, returning additional appointment data that was not intended to be displayed.
Based on the observed behavior, which step of the SQL injection methodology are you performing?
You are an ethical hacker at HorizonSec Consulting, hired by Liberty Insurance in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to test the resilience of their online claim submission portal. During testing, you modify the claim ID parameter in the URL with conditions such as AND and AND 1=2. When the first condition is used, the portal displays claim details as normal; when the second condition is used, the page displays no results. You repeat this process to determine how the application responds to true and false conditions without error messages or delays.
Based on the observed behavior, which SQL injection technique are you employing?
A penetration tester suspects that a web application ' s login form is vulnerable to SQL injection due to improper sanitization of user input. What is the most appropriate approach to test for SQL injection in the login form?
Natalie Brooks is leading an authorized red team exercise for Sentinel Networks in Seattle. While briefing her team on different attacker profiles, she describes an individual who is new to cybersecurity, actively learning techniques through online communities, and experimenting with basic tools on low-risk targets to build practical skills without causing significant damage.
Which hacker class best matches this profile?
On July 25, 2025, during a penetration test at Horizon Financial Services in Chicago, Illinois, cybersecurity specialist Laura Bennett is analyzing an attack simulation targeting the company ' s online banking portal. The system logs reveal a coordinated barrage of traffic from multiple compromised systems, orchestrated through a central command-and-control server, flooding the portal and rendering it unavailable to legitimate users. The attack leverages a network of infected devices, likely recruited via malicious links on social media.
What is the structure or concept most likely used to launch this coordinated attack?