ECCouncil EC Council Certified Incident Handler (ECIH v3) 212-89 Exam Dumps: Updated Questions & Answers (January 2026)

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (ECIH-aligned):

This scenario focuses on user-driven mitigation of phishing threats, a key element of the ECIH Email Security Incident Handling module. Aarav’s guidance directly reinforces one of the most important user best practices: never engage with suspicious emails.

Option D is correct because avoiding replies or forwarding suspicious emails prevents attackers from validating active accounts, spreading malware, or escalating social engineering attacks. ECIH emphasizes that user interaction often determines the success of phishing campaigns, making awareness and behavior critical controls.

Option A is unrelated to security. Option B is a sender-side control, not a user response. Option C may reduce accidental clicks but does not address the broader behavioral risk.

By instructing users to report, delete, and avoid engagement, Aarav strengthens the organization’s human firewall, which ECIH recognizes as essential in reducing phishing impact.

BrowsingHistoryView is a tool designed to collect and analyze history data from various web browsers, including Microsoft Edge. It allows users to view the browsing history stored by their browsers in one unified interface. This includes URLs visited, page titles, visit times, and the number of visits to each page. While ChromeHistoryView is specific to Google Chrome, BrowsingHistoryView supports multiple browsers, making it versatile for analyzing history data across different platforms. MZCacheView and MZHistoryView do not exist as tools recognized for this purpose in the context of Microsoft Edge or other browser history analysis.

A Permanent Denial-of-Service (PDoS) attack, also known as "phlashing," is a form of attack that targets hardware, causing irreversible damage to the hardware components, thereby making the device unusable without a replacement or significant hardware intervention. In the scenario described with Zaimasoft, the attackers' actions leading to the damage of hardware components align with the characteristics of a PDoS attack. Unlike Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) or Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, which generally aim to overwhelm a system's resources temporarily, or DRDoS (Distributed Reflection Denial of Service), which involves amplification techniques using third-party servers, a PDoS attack directly damages the physical hardware, necessitating its replacement or reinstallation. This makes PDoS particularly severe due to its permanent impact on the targeted organization's hardware infrastructure.

A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is characterized by flooding the network with a high volume of traffic to consume all available network resources, preventing intended or authorized users from accessing system, network, or applications. This type of attack aims to overwhelm the target's capacity to handle incoming requests, causing a denial of access to legitimate users. Unlike XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) attacks, URL manipulation, or SQL injection, which exploit vulnerabilities in web applications for unauthorized data access or manipulation, a DoS attack specifically targets the availability of services.

Risk assumption involves accepting the potential risk and continuing to operate the IT system while implementing controls to reduce the risk to an acceptable level. This strategy acknowledges that some level of risk is inevitable and focuses on managing it through mitigation measures rather than eliminating it entirely. Risk avoidance would entail taking actions to avoid the risk entirely, risk planning involves preparing for potential risks, and risk transference shifts the risk to another party, typically through insurance or outsourcing. Risk assumption is a pragmatic approach that balances the need for operational continuity with the imperative of risk management.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (ECIH-aligned):

This scenario involves a high-privilege insider threat, one of the most difficult risks to detect. ECIH emphasizes that senior executives often have broad access, making role-based restrictions impractical.

Option A is correct because advanced employee monitoring and behavioral analytics can detect abnormal access patterns, data exfiltration trends, and deviations from established baselines—even for executives. These tools operate within legal and policy frameworks while providing actionable alerts.

Options B and C reduce efficiency and are easily bypassed. Option D is intrusive and ineffective for digital exfiltration.

ECIH identifies behavioral monitoring as the most effective control for detecting malicious insiders with legitimate access, making Option A correct.

The port scanning technique that involves resetting the TCP connection between the client and server abruptly before the completion of the three-way handshake, thereby leaving the connection half-open, is known as a Stealth scan (also referred to as a SYN scan). This technique allows the scanner to inquire about the status of a port without establishing a full TCP connection, making the scan less detectible to intrusion detection systems and less likely to be logged by the target. It's a method used to discreetly discover open ports on a target machine without establishing a full connection that would be visible in logs.

Auditing the system and network log files is a crucial step in the incident triage phase of the incident response and handling process. During incident triage, incident handlers assess and prioritize incidents based on their severity, impact, and the urgency of the response required. Part of this assessment involves reviewing log files to understand the nature of the incident, its scope, and the systems or networks affected. This information helps in categorizing the incident and deciding on the appropriate response actions. Unlike containment, which aims to limit the damage, incident disclosure, which involves communicating about the incident, or incident eradication, which focuses on removing the threat, incident triage is about evaluating and prioritizing the incident based on detailed log analysis among other factors.

True attribution in the context of cyber incidents involves the identification of the actual individuals, groups, or entities behind an attack. This can include pinpointing specific persons, organizations, societies, or even countries that sponsor or carry out cyber intrusions or attacks. Alexis's efforts to identify and attribute the actors behind a recent attack by distinguishing the specific origins of the threat align with the concept of true attribution, which goes beyond mere speculation to provide concrete evidence about the perpetrators.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (ECIH-aligned):

This scenario reflects the post-incident recovery and reporting phase outlined in the ECIH curriculum. After containment and eradication, organizations must address legal, regulatory, and investigative requirements, especially when financial fraud and executive compromise are involved.

Option A is correct because forwarding detailed incident reports to a government cybercrime agency constitutes legal escalation and investigation support. ECIH stresses the importance of cooperation with law enforcement in cases involving fraud, financial loss, or cross-border criminal activity. Proper documentation supports potential prosecution, restitution efforts, and regulatory compliance.

Options B, C, and D are technical recovery actions unrelated to legal follow-up.

By engaging authorities with verified evidence, the organization fulfills its recovery obligations beyond technical remediation, aligning with ECIH best practices.