A company is migrating from a legacy system that uses unsalted MD5 hashes to a new system that uses bcrypt with a per-user salt. During the transition, both systems are active. An attacker has obtained the hash database from both systems. Which statement about the attacker's ability to crack passwords is accurate?

The attacker will crack the bcrypt hashes faster because they are newer

The attacker can use the same rainbow table for both systems

The attacker cannot crack the bcrypt hashes because they are salted

The attacker can crack the MD5 hashes faster than the bcrypt hashes, but the bcrypt hashes are also vulnerable to dictionary attacks

A system administrator finds a file with lines like `$apr1$salt$hash` and needs to identify the hash type. Which algorithm is indicated by the `$apr1$` prefix?

Apache MD5 crypt (a variant of MD5)

Why does salting make dictionary attacks more difficult for an attacker who has obtained a database of password hashes?

It requires the attacker to compute a separate hash for each salt value

It prevents the attacker from knowing the hash algorithm

It increases the length of the hash output

It encrypts the password before hashing

GIAC Penetration Tester (GPEN)

Domain 3Objective 1

Password Formats and Hashes GPEN Practice Questions (Page 1)

Part of the Password Attacks and Credential Attacks domain, which makes up ~28% of our current practice bank. GIAC (SANS) does not publish an official question count, but from its 180-minute exam (~70–120 total, ~20–34 in this domain), expect 5–9 from this objective — we provide 39 practice questions to prepare you well beyond it. (estimate)

39questions here

8free pages

6concepts

Questions 1–5

1foundation · easy
Which password cracking technique involves trying every possible combination of characters up to a certain length?
Select an answer first
2expert · hard
A company is migrating from a legacy system that uses unsalted MD5 hashes to a new system that uses bcrypt with a per-user salt. During the transition, both systems are active. An attacker has obtained the hash database from both systems. Which statement about the attacker's ability to crack passwords is accurate?
Select an answer first
3foundation · easy
Which hash algorithm produces a 128-bit hash value and is considered cryptographically broken for many security purposes due to collision vulnerabilities?
Select an answer first
4application · medium
A system administrator finds a file with lines like `$apr1$salt$hash` and needs to identify the hash type. Which algorithm is indicated by the `$apr1$` prefix?
Select an answer first
5foundation · easy
Why does salting make dictionary attacks more difficult for an attacker who has obtained a database of password hashes?
Select an answer first

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Password Formats and Hashes GPEN Practice Questions (Page 1)

Questions 1–5

Which password cracking technique involves trying every possible combination of characters up to a certain length?

Which hash algorithm produces a 128-bit hash value and is considered cryptographically broken for many security purposes due to collision vulnerabilities?

A system administrator finds a file with lines like `$apr1$salt$hash` and needs to identify the hash type. Which algorithm is indicated by the `$apr1$` prefix?

Why does salting make dictionary attacks more difficult for an attacker who has obtained a database of password hashes?

Keep studying — Password Attacks and Credential Attacks