Advanced Cryptography CAS-005 Practice Questions (Page 5)

Questions 21–25

1. 21application · medium

   A company stores password hashes in a database. The security team wants to increase the cost of offline brute-force attacks against these hashes without requiring users to change their passwords. The application runs on commodity servers and must keep authentication latency under 200 ms. Which solution best meets these requirements?

   • AUse a fast hash function such as MD5 with a global salt to minimize authentication latency.
   • BEncrypt the password hashes with AES-256 using a hardware security module (HSM).
   • CStore passwords in plaintext and rely on network encryption to protect them.
   • DUse a key derivation function such as PBKDF2 with a high iteration count and a per-user random salt.
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2. 22foundation · easy

   What is the primary purpose of post-quantum cryptography?

   • ATo develop cryptographic algorithms that are resistant to attacks from quantum computers
   • BTo replace all symmetric algorithms with quantum key distribution
   • CTo increase the key size of existing algorithms to make them quantum-safe
   • DTo use quantum computers to break existing encryption faster
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4. 23foundation · easy

   What is the main security benefit of applying a key stretching technique to a low-entropy password?

   • AIt reduces the length of the key needed for encryption
   • BIt guarantees that the derived key is completely random
   • CIt increases the computational effort required for each password guess, slowing down brute-force attacks
   • DIt encrypts the password so that it can be stored in plaintext
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5. 24foundation · easy

   What is a primary benefit of using hardware cryptographic acceleration?

   • AIt eliminates the need for encryption keys
   • BIt makes encryption unbreakable
   • CIt automatically encrypts all data in memory
   • DIt offloads computationally intensive cryptographic operations from the CPU, improving overall system performance
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6. 25foundation · easy

   Which of the following is an example of hardware cryptographic acceleration?

   • AA software library that implements RSA in pure Python
   • BA firewall rule that blocks cryptographic traffic
   • CA password manager that stores keys in a file
   • DA CPU instruction set extension that accelerates AES encryption
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