urity+ Exam
The current version of Security+ is SY0-301 and CompTIA plans on adding performance based testing questions to this exam in the first quarter of 2013 (January, February, or March).
Once again, I see many possibilities with the command prompt.
As an example, you might be asked to calculate the hash on a file and when you click the button, the simulated environment will put you into a command prompt simulation. If you type in dir and press Enter, you’ll see the files in the directory and you might have the md5sum or sha1sum executable file.
You’ll need to be familiar with how to use these programs to calculate a hash. For example, you can calculate the Message Digest 5 (MD5) hash of a file named study.txt with the following command:
The program then outputs something like this:
The first string of hexadecimal characters is the hash of the file, and the file name (study.txt) is after the star (*).
A similar example is in the CompTIA Security+: Get Certified Get Ahead: SY0-301 Study Guide (ISBN 978-1463762360) in the cryptography chapter.