Encryption and Cryptography Flashcards

What is full disk encryption (FDE)?

Answer: Encrypting all data on a storage drive, including the OS and user files

Full disk encryption encrypts the entire contents of a storage device, protecting all data including the operating system from unauthorized access.

What is PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) primarily used for?

Answer: Encrypting and digitally signing emails and files

PGP provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication, most commonly used to encrypt and sign email messages and files.

What is the key difference between encoding and encryption?

Answer: Encoding is reversible without a key; encryption requires a secret key to reverse

Encoding transforms data using a publicly known scheme with no secret key required to reverse it, while encryption requires a secret key to decrypt.

What is a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack in the context of encryption?

Answer: An attack where an attacker secretly intercepts and possibly alters communications between two parties

In a MitM attack, an attacker secretly positions themselves between two communicating parties to intercept, read, or alter their encrypted communications.

Which of the following is a best practice for encryption key management?

Answer: Storing keys separately from encrypted data and rotating them regularly

Proper key management requires storing keys separately from the data they protect and rotating them periodically to minimize the impact of a potential compromise.

What does it mean when a browser warns that a website's certificate is 'expired'?

Answer: The digital certificate used to establish a secure connection is no longer valid

An expired certificate means the time-limited validity period of the digital certificate has passed, so the site's identity and encryption can no longer be verified.

Which type of attack attempts to break encryption by systematically trying every possible key combination?

Answer: Brute force attack

A brute force attack exhaustively tries every possible key or password combination until the correct one is found, which is why longer keys are more secure.