What is the primary goal of a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack?

To analyze the frequency of letters in ciphertext

To guess the encryption key through exhaustive search

To intercept and potentially alter communication between two parties without their knowledge

To induce faults in a cryptographic device

Which of the following is a recommended prevention strategy against ransomware attacks?

Using the same password for all accounts to simplify management

Regularly backing up data and storing backups offline

Paying the ransom immediately to minimize downtime

Disabling all encryption on the network

An analyst has intercepted a large amount of ciphertext encrypted with a stream cipher that reuses a key. The analyst does not have any known plaintext. Which attack is most feasible?

Ciphertext-only attack, exploiting the key reuse to recover plaintext via statistical analysis

Known-plaintext attack, but the analyst has no known plaintext

Side-channel attack, measuring the power consumption of the encryption device

Brute force attack, trying all possible keys

A security administrator discovers that an attacker has forged a Kerberos ticket granting access to a specific service. The ticket was created using the service account's password hash. Which attack occurred, and what is the most effective immediate mitigation?

Pass the hash attack; enable Credential Guard

Silver ticket attack; change the service account password

Golden ticket attack; reset the KRBTGT password twice

Kerberoasting; use a stronger service account password

Which security property is most directly undermined by a man-in-the-middle attack?

Authentication and confidentiality

Certified Information Systems Security Professional

Domain 3Objective 7

3.7 - Understand Methods of Cryptanalytic Attacks CISSP Practice Questions (Page 2)

Part of the Security Architecture and Engineering domain, which accounts for 13% of the CISSP exam. ISC2 does not publish an official question count, but from its 180-minute exam (~70–120 total, ~9–16 in this domain), expect 1–2 from this objective — we provide 42 practice questions to prepare you well beyond it. (estimate)

42questions here

9free pages

13concepts

13%of the exam

Questions 6–10

6foundation · easy
What is the primary goal of a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack?
Select an answer first
7foundation · easy
Which of the following is a recommended prevention strategy against ransomware attacks?
Select an answer first
8application · medium
An analyst has intercepted a large amount of ciphertext encrypted with a stream cipher that reuses a key. The analyst does not have any known plaintext. Which attack is most feasible?
Select an answer first
9expert · hard
A security administrator discovers that an attacker has forged a Kerberos ticket granting access to a specific service. The ticket was created using the service account's password hash. Which attack occurred, and what is the most effective immediate mitigation?
Select an answer first
10foundation · easy
Which security property is most directly undermined by a man-in-the-middle attack?
Select an answer first

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