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Difficulty: EasyThreat Actors, Attributes, and Attack Vectors

An IT security administrator at a retail organization discovers that an authorized system administrator leveraged legitimate elevated privileges to copy and exfiltrate confidential payment database records for personal gain. Which threat actor classification best describes this individual?

  1. Insider threatAnswer
  2. B
    Hacktivist
  3. C
    Script kiddie
  4. D
    Nation-state actor

Answer

Insider threat
An insider threat refers to an employee, contractor, or business partner who has authorized access to an organization's assets and misuses that access to compromise data confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Because the individual held legitimate administrator privileges and abused them internally, this is a classic insider threat scenario.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the access level and position of the actor in the scenario.
The individual is an authorized system administrator with legitimate elevated access to internal systems.
Threat actors are categorized based on their relationship to the organization and their initial level of access.
2
Evaluate the motivation and actions taken by the actor.
The individual misused authorized access to exfiltrate payment database records for personal gain.
Misusing legitimate privileges from within an organization matches the defining characteristic of an insider threat.

Key Concept

Insider Threat Attributes and Capabilities
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Topics

Threat Actors, Attributes, and Attack Vectors

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