The latest 150 penetration testing interview questions in 2023

foreword

 In the blink of an eye, half of 2023 is almost over. I wonder if you have found the job you want. Today I have compiled 150 penetration test interview questions for you. If you need answers, you can leave me a message in the comment area~

The first set of penetration testing interview questions 

1. Do you know what is network security penetration testing?

2. What is your approach to cyber security penetration testing?

3. What method do you use to strengthen the security of a server?

4. Do you know the common types of vulnerabilities in penetration testing?

5. What tools do you use for penetration testing?

6. If you found a website with a SQL injection vulnerability, what would you do?

7. In penetration testing, what are your own methods to ensure that the penetration testing is successful?

8. What is a successful network security penetration test case you have ever had in your work?

9. When conducting penetration testing, something unexpected happens, how do you deal with it?

10. Do you know about bypass attacks and bypass defenses?

11. How to prevent cyber attacks?

12. When attacking through vulnerabilities, what logs will be recorded?

13. Some websites may only be accessed through HTTP, how to attack?

14. Talk about what protection measures are in place when the installed IP is attacked?

15. Introduce several common technical means to protect website security?

16. How to carry out online security protection?

17. How to ensure network security (prevent hacker attacks)?

18. Do you know the OWASP TOP 10? Please list the 10 vulnerabilities and describe them.

19. Do you know reverse engineering? What is inversion?

20. Talk about the aftermath of hacking?

21. What is the difference between Rebound Shell and Connect Back Shell?

22. What are the ways to tip the breakout proxy?

23. Who are more likely to be hacked?

24. Talk about ways to defend against XSS and CSRF attacks

25. How to remove website Trojans?

26. Measures to improve web application security?

27. Which file types can be used as Trojan virus or malicious files?

28. How do you protect sensitive files from being accessed?

29. Have you ever used Snort? Can you talk about its pros and cons?

30. Talk about the solution to URL hijacking?

31. In credit card fraud, do you know the skimmer website?

32. Do you know about DDOS attacks? How was it initiated?

33. How do you protect against DOS attacks?

34. Can you explain what is an SMB vulnerability?

35. How to check network security?

36. Do you know what social engineering is? What is its role in penetration testing?

37. What social engineering methods have you used to carry out attacks?

38. How to ensure the security of the application?

39. How to prevent servers and applications from being hacked?

40. Do you know how to perform a port scan? What tools do you usually use?

41. How to check the security of a web application?

42. Do you know what a deserialization attack is?

43. How to protect against malware in ZIP archives?

44. Have you ever used fuzzing techniques in penetration testing?

45. How to check whether an application has a memory leak problem?

46. What operating systems and programming languages ​​are you familiar with?

47. What laws and regulations do you know about cybersecurity?

48. How do you ensure data security during penetration testing?

49. How to deal with sensitive information protected by encryption in the target website?

50. How do you judge the credibility of a cyber security company?

51. What are the automation tools in penetration testing?

52. How do you deal with vulnerabilities that are discovered during penetration testing?

53. Do you know what an "exploitation" is?

54. How much attention do you pay to community vulnerability announcements?

55. What do you think are the main advantages of vulnerability mining?

56. How to prepare a report after penetration testing?

57. How do you differentiate between white box testing and black box testing?

58. How do you usually conduct experimental teaching of penetration testing?

59. What ideas and methods do you think are more suitable for use in penetration testing?

60. What preparations should be done for penetration testing?

61. When restoring a compromised website, how do you recover the affected data?

62. After the penetration test, what anti-vulnerability prevention work needs to be done?

63. Penetration testing often involves exploiting SQL injection vulnerabilities, can you explain how that works?

64. What is the shear plate interception technique in penetration testing? What is the role of this technology?

65. How to deal with snooping malware?

66. How to protect against remote multiplexing attacks?

67. Deserialization vulnerabilities are often used in penetration testing, what do you know about them?

68. How to find the vulnerabilities existing on the network through port scanning?

69. Several common network attack methods in actual penetration testing are given.

70. What are your thoughts on the psychoanalysis of hackers?

71. Vulnerabilities are found in the penetration test, what aspects should you pay attention to when you need to communicate with customers?

72. How to ensure the confidentiality of network data?

73. How can I keep myself safe while performing a penetration test?

74. Tell me about off-site backup technology?

75. Give a few guidelines to help network security engineers maintain network security?

76. How to protect sensitive data when scanning for security vulnerabilities?

77. What are the cookie-related attack methods in penetration testing?

78. How to detect directory traversal vulnerabilities of websites?

79. How to detect SQL injection vulnerabilities in penetration testing?

80. How to tell if a user is using a proxy server?

81. How to defend against XSS attacks in penetration testing?

82. Introduce several common DDoS attack methods, how to deal with these attacks?

83. How to detect reflection attacks in penetration testing?

84. How to detect signs of a site being attacked in a penetration test?

85. How to use Metasploit in penetration testing?

86. What are the commonly used cracking tools in penetration testing?

87. What sources of information do you generally follow when it comes to cybersecurity?

88. How to assess network security in penetration testing?

89. How to simulate a hacker's attack in a penetration test?

90. How to detect common vulnerabilities of web applications in penetration testing?

91. How to detect file upload vulnerabilities in penetration testing?

92. How to detect cross-site request forgery attacks in penetration testing?

93. How to detect HTTP response header injection vulnerabilities in penetration testing?

94. How to detect HTTP request method injection vulnerabilities in penetration testing?

95. How to detect SSL/TLS weaknesses in penetration testing?

96. How to detect SMTP command injection vulnerability in penetration testing?

97. How to detect Xml entity injection vulnerabilities in penetration testing?

98. How to detect weak passwords in penetration testing?

99. How to detect authentication via login form in penetration testing?

100. How to detect problems with HTTPS/SSL set certificates in penetration testing?

Second set of penetration testing interview questions

1. How do you conduct network security penetration testing?

2. What cyber attack techniques do you know? How to use them to attack?

3. Are you familiar with which tools are used for network penetration testing and how to use them?

4. What problems did you encounter during penetration testing and how did you solve them?

5. How do you identify and exploit system vulnerabilities?

6. How do you securely store and handle sensitive data?

7. How do you keep detailed records of penetration testing results?

8. How do you evaluate your network security strategy and its effectiveness?

9. Do you know what security measures can prevent DDoS attacks?

10. How do you assess and improve code security?

11. How do you ensure data transmission security in the network?

12. What types of malware (such as Trojans, viruses, worms) do you know and how they attack?

13. What protection measures do you know about malware?

14. How to protect IoT devices from being attacked?

15. How to assess the security of a web application?

16. How do you identify attacks through network capture?

17. How do you ensure the security of your infrastructure, especially physical security?

18. How do you detect and troubleshoot abnormal traffic in your network?

19. How do you prevent social engineering attacks?

20. What encryption algorithms do you know, their advantages and disadvantages?

21. How to authenticate securely, especially using multi-factor authentication?

22. How do you protect your wireless network from attacks?

23. How do you assess and improve the security of your network?

24. What sources of cyber threat intelligence do you know and how do you evaluate them?

25. What red team/blue team techniques do you know and how do you use them?

26. How do you protect the integrity of data, especially during transmission?

27. How do you detect and troubleshoot CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) attacks?

28. How do you prevent XML injection attacks?

29. How to protect the privacy of data?

30. What security incident and emergency response plans do you know?

31. How do you protect mobile devices from attacks?

32. What cybersecurity laws and regulatory requirements do you know?

33. How do you secure your cloud?

34. How to prevent SQL injection attacks?

35. How to protect the security of the payment system?

36. How do you assess and improve network reliability?

37. What virtualization security measures do you know?

38. How can you use a VPN for privacy and security?

39. How do you protect against social engineering attacks such as phishing and stalking attacks?

40. How do you detect and troubleshoot malicious activity on your network?

41. How do you evaluate and improve network availability?

42. How do you ensure authorization and authentication of network systems?

43. What cybersecurity risk assessment techniques do you know?

44. What cyber threat modeling and identification methods do you know?

45. How do you secure your database?

46. How do you secure logging and monitoring of network systems?

47. What anti-fraud techniques do you know?

48. How do you prevent DNS pollution attacks?

49. How to protect the security of the API?

50. How do you conduct security intrusion analysis through network log files?