Introduction to Ethical Hacking

This objective sits in Information Security and Ethical Hacking Overview, which carries 6% of the CEH exam. The questions below are original, written from the official objective title above, and each explanation cites the EC-Council page it rests on.

Objective title verbatim from the official objectives. EC-Council exam page ↗

A worked example

Shown solved, with the whole explanation open: this is what every question here carries.

Information Security and Ethical Hacking OverviewModerate

An engineer reviews a protocol that encrypts every payload but accepts responses from any host claiming the server address. Which communication security goal is unmet?

Payload confidentialityPayload confidentiality is what the encryption already provides, so it is not the gap.

Data integrity in transitData integrity answers whether bits changed on the wire. The design fails on identity, not modification.

Peer entity authenticationCorrect · your answerCorrect.

Non-repudiation to a third partyNon-repudiation would matter for proving to an outside party later what was sent.

Correct.

Checked against rfc-editor.org, September 2026

Concept

Encrypting traffic protects the content of a message and says nothing about who sits at the far end. A channel needs a separate guarantee that the far endpoint is the party the sender meant to reach, or the other guarantees protect a conversation with an attacker.

Why C

The design hides the payload but never establishes that the endpoint is the one intended, so a host claiming the server address is accepted and the other two guarantees rest on nothing.

Source

The third property we're concerned with is PEER ENTITY AUTHENTICATION. What we mean by this is that we know that one of the endpoints in the communication is the one we intended.

IETF RFC Editor, RFC 3552 Guidelines for Writing RFC Text on Security Considerations, checked September 2026

#security-goals#authentication#protocol-design

Now you: practice questions

No account needed. The explanation opens when you answer.

Sample question 1 of 3

Information Security and Ethical Hacking OverviewEasy

A tester reads credentials off a shared LAN segment while transmitting nothing onto the wire. How is that activity classified?

Sample question 2 of 3

Information Security and Ethical Hacking OverviewHard

An analyst sees forged TCP SYN packets from spoofed sources whose replies can never reach the sender. Which attack category does the traffic fit?

Sample question 3 of 3

Information Security and Ethical Hacking OverviewHard

An administrator finds an intruder logging in with a password captured a week earlier from cleartext POP traffic. How do the two steps classify?

That’s 3 of the full CEH bank.

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Read the sources

These are the official pages the questions above cite. Reading them is studying the objective from the primary source, which is what the explanations point you toward anyway.