Possible Causes and Solutions: Firewall Misconfiguration, Zero-day Attack, SSL Certificate Issues
Question
An entire enterprise cannot access a specific website.
The network technician knows the website was accessible last week.
The technician can also ping the website.
Which of the following is the technician MOST likely to find upon investigation?
A.
The firewall is misconfigured. B.
The network is being hit by a zero-day attack. C.
The SSL certificate is untrusted. D.
The SSL certificate has expired.
D.
Explanations
An entire enterprise cannot access a specific website.
The network technician knows the website was accessible last week.
The technician can also ping the website.
Which of the following is the technician MOST likely to find upon investigation?
A.
The firewall is misconfigured.
B.
The network is being hit by a zero-day attack.
C.
The SSL certificate is untrusted.
D.
The SSL certificate has expired.
D.
Based on the information given in the question, the network technician knows that the website was accessible last week, and they can currently ping the website. This suggests that the issue is not related to a complete outage of the website or a network connectivity problem.
A. Misconfigured Firewall: This is possible, but unlikely, as the website was accessible last week, which suggests that the firewall was correctly configured at that time. Additionally, if the firewall were misconfigured, it would likely affect multiple websites, not just one.
B. Zero-day attack: This is also unlikely, as a zero-day attack would typically affect multiple systems and not just one website. Additionally, if the network were under attack, it is unlikely that the technician would be able to ping the website.
C. Untrusted SSL certificate: While an untrusted SSL certificate could potentially prevent users from accessing a website, it would not prevent a network technician from accessing the site. Additionally, the question states that the website was accessible last week, which suggests that the SSL certificate was valid at that time.
D. Expired SSL certificate: This is the most likely cause of the issue. If the SSL certificate for the website has expired, users will be prevented from accessing it. However, the website would still be pingable, which would explain why the technician can ping it. Additionally, the fact that the website was accessible last week suggests that the SSL certificate has recently expired.
Therefore, based on the given information, the most likely cause of the issue is an expired SSL certificate (option D).
