Which attack damages the reliability of an intermediate web cache by swapping cached content for a URL with infected content?

Which attack damages the reliability of an intermediate web cache by swapping cached content for a URL with infected content?

• A. Web Defacement
• B. Web Cache Poisoning Attack
• C. Directory Traversal Attacks
• D. SQL Injection Attacks

Answer: (B)

Damaging the reliability of an intermediate web cache happens when content for a specific URL is poisoned, causing the cache to store and serve infected content to subsequent users. The attacker exploits the cache’s trust in a response that appears valid for that URL, so the cache stores the malicious content and serves it from the cache instead of fetching fresh content from the origin server. As a result, many users receive the poisoned version simply by requesting the same URL, undermining trust and reliability without directly altering the origin site. This differs from web defacement, which changes content on the origin server itself, from directory traversal, which seeks files outside the allowed directory, and from SQL injection, which targets databases.

Damaging the reliability of an intermediate web cache happens when content for a specific URL is poisoned, causing the cache to store and serve infected content to subsequent users. The attacker exploits the cache’s trust in a response that appears valid for that URL, so the cache stores the malicious content and serves it from the cache instead of fetching fresh content from the origin server. As a result, many users receive the poisoned version simply by requesting the same URL, undermining trust and reliability without directly altering the origin site. This differs from web defacement, which changes content on the origin server itself, from directory traversal, which seeks files outside the allowed directory, and from SQL injection, which targets databases.