QuestionQ332

Logs and Network Forensics

During an after-hours incident at a news portal in Raleigh, North Carolina, analysts notice many requests to wordpress/wp-login.php from the same IP address within a brief period. Minutes later, they observe one entry that differs from the earlier pattern. To differentiate continued brute-force activity from post-authentication navigation to the administrative area, which log element most strongly indicates the latter?

  • A “the URL has been changed to /wordpress/wp-admin/"
  • B “HTTP 302 status code (... indicates URL redirection)"
  • C “several login attempts ... within a very short timeframe”
  • D “from the same IP"
Explanation

The /wordpress/wp-admin/ path is the WordPress administrative area. A transition from repeated requests to wp-login.php to a request for that path is the strongest indication of navigation after authentication; the WordPress documentation identifies wp-login.php as the login page and describes the Administration Screen/Dashboard after login.

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