Proactive Detection in Cybersecurity: CompTIA Security + Study Guide Insights

In this episode of Technology Tap: CompTIA Study Guide, we explore how proactive detection surpasses reactive troubleshooting in cybersecurity. For those preparing for their CompTIA exam, understanding the subtle clues and quiet anomalies attackers leave behind is essential for developing strong IT skills and excelling in tech exam prep. We dive deep into the critical indicators that help you detect security compromises early, providing practical knowledge essential for your technology education and IT certification journey. Join us as we equip you with expert insights to sharpen your detection abilities and enhance your competence in protecting systems effectively.

We walk through the behaviors that matter: viruses that hitch a ride on clicks, worms that paint the network with unexplained traffic, and fileless attacks that live in memory and borrow admin tools like PowerShell and scheduled tasks. You’ll learn how to spot spyware by the aftermath of credential misuse, recognize RATs and backdoors by their steady beaconing to unknown IPs, and use contradictions—like tools disagreeing about running processes—as a signal for rootkits. We also draw a sharp line between ransomware’s loud chaos and cryptojacking’s quiet drain on your CPU and fan.

Zooming out, we map network and application signals: certificate warnings and duplicate MACs that hint at man-in-the-middle, DNS mismatches that suggest cache poisoning, and log patterns that betray SQL injection, replay abuse, or directory traversal. Along the way, we talk about building Security+ instincts through scaffolding—A+ for OS and hardware intuition, Network+ for protocol fluency, and Security+ for attacker behavior—so indicators make sense the moment you see them.

If you want a sharper eye for subtle threats and a stronger shot at your Security+ exam, this guide will train your attention on the tells adversaries can’t fully hide. Subscribe, share with a teammate who handles triage, and leave a review with your favorite indicator to watch—we’ll feature the best ones in a future show.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Series Context
• 2:00 Why Indicators Matter Over Names
• 4:30 Viruses, Worms, And Network Clues
• 7:30 Fileless Attacks And Living Off The Land
• 8:41 [Ad] Turn Any Doc Into a Private Audiobook. No Subscriptions. Try WithAudio on Your Mac/PC.
• 9:16 (Cont.) Fileless Attacks And Living Off The Land
• 10:34 Spyware, RATs, And Beaconing
• 12:34 Rootkits, Ransomware, And Cryptojacking
• 14:34 Network And Application Attack Indicators
• 18:04 CompTIA Path And Scaffolding Advice
• 23:04 Bootcamps, Student Stories, And Readiness

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:28

And welcome to Technology Tap. I'm Professor J. Rod. In this episode, Indicators of Malicious Activity. Let's tap in. And welcome to Technology Tap. Professor J. Rod. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a cybersecurity professor that loves to help students pass the Comp T A Plus, Network Plus, and Security Plus exams. And every now and then I do like a history of you know modern technology, you know, you know, stuff that's happened before. I've done about Napster, I've done an episode about Netscape Navigator, those type of history lessons. I like to consider myself historical amateur historian. If you want to reach me, you can reach me at professorjrod at gmail.com. On TikTok at professorjrod on Instagram at professor Jrod and YouTube, Technology Tap Podcast is my channel. And welcome to this episode. Alright, so we're going to talk about is indicators of malicious activity. This is part of the Security Plus series that I've been doing. So if you're interested in taking the Security Plus exam, this chapter is one that you need to listen to. The system is running, that's the problem. No alarms, no blue screens, no angry users pounding at the door. Just a quiet machine working a little harder than it should. And if you don't know what to look for, you miss it. Today we're talking about something that separates technicians who react from professionals who detect. Because attacks don't always explode. Sometimes they whisper. Today's episode is all about the indicators of malicious activity, the subtle signs attackers leave behind when they think no one is watching. This is like I said before, this is part of the Security Plus certification exam. So by the end of this episode, you won't just know what malware is, you'll know how to recognize it, and even even when it's trying to hide. So grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let's tap in. You learn early in IT that broken systems announce themselves. They crash, they freeze, they stop responding. Security incidents don't work that way. Security incidents try very hard to look normal. And that's why this lesson exists. Because Camtia doesn't want you memorizing malware names. They want you learning behavior. They want you to recognize when a system is doing something that doesn't match its roles. Take malware. Most people imagine malware as something obvious. Pop-ups, ransom notes, blinking warnings. But the most dangerous malware doesn't announce itself at all. It runs quietly in the background. A virus, for example, needs help. It doesn't spread by magic, it attaches itself to files, documents, executables, macros, and waits for a human to click. So when Comt gives you a scenario where files are being modified without user activity or application behaving differently after opening an attachment, they're not asking you to identify the virus. They're asking you if you recognize the indicator. Worms take this a step further. They don't wait for permissions, they spread across networks on their own. And the indicator isn't the worm itself, it's what the worm causes. Bandwidth spikes, systems slowing down simultaneously, networks saturated with traffic that no one can explain. Then there's fallless malware. This is where the modern attacks get dangerous. FOLESS malware doesn't live on a disk, it lives in memory. It uses tools that already exist on the system. PowerShell, schedule tasks, tools administrators use every day. So antivirus signatures don't catch it. Instead, you detect it by noticing what it doesn't what doesn't belong. PowerShell executing when no administrator is locked in, register keys that recreate processes after reboot. Script launching other scripts with no clear business reason. That's the indicator. Spyware works differently. It watches, it locks keystrokes, it captures screenshots, it redirects browsers. The indicator isn't the spyware itself, it's the account compromise that follows. Password stops working, users get locked out, logins appear at odd hours from unexpected locations. Backdoors and remote access Trojans take control. They phone home. That phone home behavior, that beaconing, is one of the clearest indicators Camtia expects you to recognize. Regular outbound connections to unknown IPs. Encrypted traffic with no business justification. A workstation behaving like a server. Root kits go deeper, they hide. They replace system files, they erase logs, they lie to diagnostic tools, and the indicator here is subtle but powerful. When multiple tools disagree about what's running on a system, something is wrong. Ransomware finally breaks the silence. Sometimes it locks the screen, sometimes it encrypts data, sometimes it simply steals resources. Crypto jacking is one of the best examples. No ransom notes, no error message. Just a fan that never stops spinning. CPU usage that never drops. And Camtea loves this scenario because it teaches you to trust resource behavior, not appearances. For malware, the lesson widens because attackers don't stop at software. They move through the network, they touch hardware, they exploit people. A denial of service attack doesn't look like hacking, it looks like traffic, too much traffic. And when that traffic comes from hundreds of or thousands of compromise systems acting together, that's a botany. A man in the middle attacks don't break encryptions, they get between systems. Art poisoning, fake gateways, intercepted sessions. The indicator is in the attack, it's the warning signs. Certificate alerts, the duplicate MAC address, connections that suddenly feel slower. DNS attack misdirects. You type in the right address, you end up in the wrong place. If you know what to look for, you notice the mismatch between the domain names and the IP address, the difference between expectations and reality. Wireless attacks. Wireless attacks that disguise themselves as convenience. Free Wi-Fi, strong signal, familiar names. And suddenly your credentials are gone. Then there are application attacks, quite perversive and devastating. SQL injections don't crash servers, it leaks data. Replay attacks don't steal passwords, they reuse trust. Directory transversal don't doesn't break authentication, it bypasses it. And the indicators show up in logs. Weird input, unexpected output, errors that shouldn't exist. This is where Comte expects you to think like an analyst. Not what attack is this, but what evidence tells me this application is being abused. If you remember nothing from this episode, remember this. Attackers leave clues. Your job isn't to catch the attacker, it is to recognize the story the system is telling you. And you know, this what one of the things that I like to tell students is all this stuff scaffolds, right? So what do I mean? When you if you start at A, in A Plus, they talk about malware, they talk about viruses, they talk about ransomware, and Network Plus, they touch on that too. By the time you get to Security Plus, you should be an expert in this stuff. So if you take it in order and you just let it scaffold, right? It you know, let it build your lessons organically. By the time you get to Security Plus, you are there's a lot of stuff that you already know. Right? I think A Plus like teaches like 50% of network plus, and I think it teaches 30% of Security Plus. That's why I get so upset when students want to kind of like jump the line, so to speak. They don't know anything about computers and they want to take security plus. Right? Take A plus. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, don't, you know, people say, Oh, I don't want to take A. I don't want to do help tests, but that's where you start.

unknown: 10:42

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 10:42

You have no experience, and all of a sudden you want to be a cybersecurity analyst, and you just want to, you know, how are you gonna know about all this stuff if you don't know anything about hardware? Or how the operating system, the different operating systems that you need to know, or what kind of cable they you they you're using. All this stuff, you know, all this stuff scaffolds. That's the one good thing about Comp T that it scaffolds. I'm a little bit worried that with all these changes that's going on, it is gonna change. You know, I'll give you an example. I took the penplus exam and I thought it was gonna renew all my shirts. It didn't, not all of them. So I'm a little bit disappointed by that because before it it would, you know, you get a higher one, it didn't matter, it reset all the lower ones. Now they're breaking it off by category, and I'm a little bit concerned that you know the private equity firm that bought CompTIA might gut it, you know, like it's like a lot of private equities do. You know, they go in there and they want to make their money, they want their money back, so they'll they'll you know, they'll go and change, make drastic changes, don't invest, just charge more. You know, maybe the certifications will renew every two years instead of every three years. Like it prices for the certifications will go up. You know, they just they just want their money and then just you know get rid of it later on, four or five, six years down the line. They got their money and then now they want to cut it loose. So I'm a little bit concerned about that, but that's for another episode, I think. But yeah, just you know, be start at the start at the bottom. There's no harm in starting at the bottom. When you I've used to teach a lot of boot camp courses, especially during COVID, and you find like you know, I would do A Plus, Network Plus, Security Plus, and sometimes I I'll have 15 people in a security plus class, and I'll ask them. This is over Zoom, right? And I would ask them, hey, give me a little bit, tell me a little bit about you, and then like somebody would tell me, Oh, I don't know, I I did floors, you know, I hate putting floors, that's my job. I want to go into security, and my friend or my brother-in-law told me to take security plus. And I would say, but why didn't you start with A? It's like, no, no, no, he told me to start at Security Plus. And I would tell him, There's an assumption that you know some stuff about IT at this level, right? And they were like, Yeah, yeah, I fix computers, you know. Then I would tell them, Look, this class will start at 10. I said, When we go to lunch at one, if you want, if you find this too difficult, come back, let me know, and I'll tell the school to put you in the A plus class. A lot of people will do that. I once had a class that had 10 people and it was four weeks on Sundays during COVID. That by the fourth Sunday, I only had one person. Because everybody else dropped out because of that, because they they it wasn't my teaching or anything because I had students that was paying for the whole four weeks. He said they they think that I'm going to teach them about you know what a cable does or what a CPU does. No, that's A plus. Right? People who who take security plus, there's there's a sense that, especially boot camps, there's a sense that you know something, you're not coming in cold, but some people want to do it, some people think that they can they can do it. But anyway, that's my advice, right? You want to start, start at the bottom, scaffold up. That's really the right way to, in my opinion, the right way to do it. But I've only seen one guy do never take a computer class, wanted to take security class. Actually, I know two people who didn't do computer. One is a lady, a young a young lady. She didn't she wanted to go to IT. Something happened in her department. She was a temp worker, they wanted to hire her full-time. And the guy who she worked for, he retired, so they were like, Oh, we can put you anywhere you want. And she said, I want to go to IT. And then she went and took the security plus class exam on her own. She started on her own. And then she took the A plus with me and she passed. And interesting, the other interesting thing about her is that she took the A plus, didn't do any of the PBQs, and still passed. And another one was a guy who took my security plus class, didn't know anything about computers either, but he had a job. Like it was like a Tuesday. It was like Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday was the class. Right? And then after the Wednesday class, he told me, listen, he goes, I have a job. I don't have a job. He's lost his job, his wife, kids, his wife, and he has kids. He goes, My wife doesn't work. I need this job, I need to get, I need to walk in on Monday with the security plus in my hand. If not, they're gonna take away the job. What do I need to do? I told him, I gave him all the powerpoints, exam dumps, and everything. I said, You need to lock yourself in a room for the next two days. Take the exam Saturday, and if you don't pass, take the exam Sunday. He got two shots at it. So he went and he did that and he passed. He passed. But you're desperate. Right? You're up against the wall. Right? So he was he was able to do it. You know, not not a lot of people can do that. So and that's it's you know, it is what it is, right? If you can do it, you can do it. Alright, let's do the questions. I read the question, and then I give you the choices, then I read it again, and then we give you the answers. Question number one A user reports that their workstation feels slow, but no errors appear. You observe consistent high CPU usage, frequent out-bound connections to unknown IP address, and no files encrypted or deleted. What is the most likely cause? A logic bomb execution, b ransomware infection, C crypto jacking malware, or D worm propagation. I'll read it again. A user reports that their workstation feels slow, but no errors appear. You observe consistent high CPU usage, frequent outbound connections to unknown IPs, addresses, and no file encryption or deleted. How was the most likely cause? A logic bomb execution, B ransomware infection, C crypto jacking malware or D worm propagation. Give you five seconds. Alright. Alright, question two. An attacker captures NTLM hashes from a compromised system and successfully authenticates to other systems without cracking the password. Which tech attack technique is being used? A password spraying B pass the hash, C credential stuffing, or D brute force attack. An attacker captures NTLM hashes from a compromised system and successfully authenticates to other systems without cracking the password. Which attack technique is being used? A password spraying B pass the hash, C credential stuffing, or D brute force attack. Well the clue's right there, NTL NTLM NTLM hashes. That's the clue right there. So the answer is B pass the hash. Alright, question three. A web application login form returns all user records when the following input is entered. Quote or one equals one space dash dash. Which vulnerability is being exploited? A cross-site scripting B directory transversal c sql injection or d session replay. I'll read it again. A web application login form returns all user records when the following input is entered. Quote or space one equals one dash dash. Which vulnerability is being exploited? A cross-site scripting B directory transversal c SQL injection or D session replay. I give you five seconds. Think about it. Typing it on the login form is what you're getting. Hopefully, you got three out of three. Let's go for the last one. Users are redirected to malicious websites even when typing correct domain names. DNS lookups resolve to unexpected items. IP address and the host file is unchanged. Which attack is most likely causing this? A Evil Twin wireless attack. B R poisoning C DNS cache poisoning or D on the path TLS TLS downgrade. Read it again. Users are redirected to a malicious website even when typing typing correct domain names. DNS lookups resolve to unexpected IP address and the host file is unchanged. What attack is the most likely cause? A evil twin wireless attacks? B ARP poisoning? C DNS cash poisoning? Or D on the path TLS downgrade. I'll give you five seconds to think about it. Five, four, three, two, one, and the answer is C. DNS cash poisoning. Alright. Very good. Hopefully, you got four out of four. And you did it right. Again, like I said before, by the way, I don't know if I said Happy New Year, but happy new year to everybody out there. But like I said before, you you know, for those of you who are gonna take the security plus, make sure that you're really ready for it and make sure that you have taken, you know, A network plus. Not that you have to, but it would make your life so much easier if you did. Because you have it's kind of like review, right? You do A plus, and then you do Network Plus, and then you already know some of the stuff, right? You know what an IP address is, you know the different types of cables. Yeah, network plus, you go a little bit more deeper into it. There's more stuff that you go to, there's more router talk, there's more switch talk, but the basics you already know. Correct? Then you go to Security Plus. Yes, do you they teach you about SQL injections, cross-site sprick, cross-site scripting, directory transversal, but you know already some of this stuff, it's not foreign to you, and you and you can find the links. Yeah, this is like this because the website form is not working, this like this because of the RAM, this like this because of the CPU, and you understand that. That's why for me it's important to start at A. You don't you don't have to go down to Tech Plus. Tech Plus is for like people who who want to understand IT but don't want to work in IT, right? And you always want to have that one person in the department that knows a lot, even though, even though it's not the IT department, that's the guy who should get tech plus, not you, right? If if it's a sales guy who's selling PC stuff, right, he should be in tech plus. He should have a tech plus certification, right? If you have a marketing person and you're marketing, and one of the guys is the head of PC accounts, he should take a tech plus course, right? He should be tech plus certified. That way he knows the basics. Alright, let's end this. Here's the truth most attacks don't look like attacks, they look like noise, they look like glitches, they look like somebody else's problems until they're yours. Security professionals aren't defined by the tools they use, they are defined by what they notice, and now you know what to look for. Next time your system feels a little off, trust that in instinct that you have that you develop over the time as a technician. And as always, keep tapping into technology. I'm Professor J. Rod. Thanks for listening. This has been a presentation of Little Cha Cha Productions, art by Sarah, music by Joe Kim. We're now part of the Pod Match Network. You can follow me at TikTok at Professor Jrod at J R O D, or you can email me at Professor J Rod J R O D at Gmail dot com.