During an internal audit at a financial services firm in Mumbai, ethical hacker Meera was...

The correct answer is LLMNR/NBT-NS Poisoning. CEH system hacking coverage explains that when a Windows host cannot resolve a name through normal DNS, it may fall back to Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution or NetBIOS Name Service. An attacker on the local network can answer those broadcasts and falsely claim to be the requested resource. If the victim then attempts authentication, NTLM or NTLMv2 challenge-response data can be captured and later cracked offline. That is exactly what this question describes: a non-existent host lookup, a quick malicious response, capture of NTLMv2 hashes, and later credential cracking. Kerberoasting targets service tickets in Active Directory, not broadcast name resolution. Pass-the-Ticket involves Kerberos tickets, and Internal Monologue abuse is a different authentication abuse pattern. CEH materials specifically connect LLMNR/NBT-NS poisoning with tools such as Responder and highlight that these protocols can be abused to collect hashes for lateral movement or privilege escalation. The scenario’s sequence of name-resolution spoofing followed by hash capture is the defining signature of an LLMNR/NBT-NS poisoning attack.