Question 1
Jacob, a professional hacker, created an exact replica of an online shopping website. He copied the entire contents of the original website onto the local system that enables him to create a dummy spam website for performing social engineering attacks over the employees.
What type of technique did Jacob use for cloning the website?
- AOption A:
Data sampling
- BOption B:
Website mirroring
- COption C:
Tailgating
- DOption D:
Social engineering
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
In this scenario, Jacob has copied the entire contents of a legitimate website to his local system to create a replica or duplicate version that looks exactly like the original. This process of duplicating a website by copying its structure, design, content, and files is known as website mirroring .
Website mirroring is a technique used to create an identical copy (mirror) of a real website for different purposes. In ethical use cases, organizations create mirror sites to ensure high availability, load balancing, or offline backup of web content. However, in malicious or unethical scenarios, attackers use website mirroring to replicate legitimate sites for phishing or social engineering attacks , tricking users into entering credentials, financial data, or other sensitive information.
By creating a mirrored version of an authentic site, an attacker can redirect unsuspecting victims to the fake version, which appears genuine. Victims then provide information that is captured by the attacker for malicious use. This method is commonly employed in phishing campaigns and credential harvesting operations.
Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:
A. Data sampling: Data sampling refers to selecting a subset of data from a larger dataset for analysis or testing. It does not involve copying or cloning websites.
C. Tailgating: Tailgating is a physical security breach technique , where an unauthorized individual follows an authorized person into a secured area without proper authentication. It is unrelated to website replication.
D. Social engineering: Social engineering is a broader psychological manipulation technique that exploits human trust to gain confidential information. While Jacob’s goal is to perform a social engineering attack using the cloned website, the method he used to create the replica is website mirroring , not social engineering itself.
Conclusion:
Jacob used website mirroring to clone the online shopping website. The mirrored site will later serve as a platform to perform social engineering attacks by deceiving employees or customers into interacting with the fake site.
Final Answer: B. Website mirroring
Explanation Reference (Based on CTIA Study Concepts):
This explanation is based on EC-Council’s Certified Threat Intelligence Analyst (CTIA) study concepts under the topics of Adversary Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) and Threat Modeling of Infrastructure Attacks , which describe how attackers create cloned or mirrored websites to perform phishing and social engineering campaigns.