Computer Science · May / June 2026 · Paper 12 · Question 5
0478
As printed in the paper
The question as text
Cyber security threats are a problem when using the internet.
Read automatically from the paper; the printed page above is exact.
Show the answer and mark scheme
5(a)[5]
One mark for each missing term or description.
term
description
brute-force attack An attack where a third party repeatedly tries to crack a password by entering different combinations. hacking
A person gains unauthorised/illegal access to a user’s
device/account/system
distributed denial
An attack where multiple computers of service attack
send a large
// DDoS
number of requests to a web server with the aim of crashing it.
spyware
(Malware) that is used to
record/track/monitors the keypresses from a user’s device.
data interception
A security threat where software is // packet sniffing
used to analyse data packets during transmission. Any packets that look useful are sent to a malicious third party.
5(b)[5]
Five from:
They limit/restrict a user’s access to data… by giving users different permissions // Users can be given read only/read-write/noaccess/execute/administrator permission
… so an attacker will only have access to the data that the user has access to… to stop a malicious person/attackerdeleting/editing/corrupting data
Prevents a user/attacker from installing malware (as they don’t have administrator permissions)Prevents user/attacker from viewing moreconfidential/important data
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