SSCP Certification SSCP Cryptography Fundamentals 2

Question 1

Which cryptographic attack involves an attacker intercepting and possibly altering communications between two parties without their knowledge?

Accepted Answer

Man-in-the-middle attack

Answer

A man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack occurs when an attacker secretly intercepts and potentially modifies communications between two parties who believe they are communicating directly.

Question 2

What is the primary purpose of a Message Authentication Code (MAC)?

Accepted Answer

Verifying both data integrity and authenticity

Answer

A MAC provides data integrity and authenticity verification by using a shared secret key to produce a tag that confirms the message has not been altered and came from a legitimate sender.

Question 3

Which of the following best describes perfect forward secrecy (PFS)?

Accepted Answer

Ensuring that compromise of long-term keys does not compromise past session keys

Answer

Perfect forward secrecy ensures that session keys are not compromised even if the server's long-term private key is later exposed, by using ephemeral key exchange methods like ECDHE.

Question 4

In asymmetric encryption, which key is used to encrypt data that only the recipient should read?

Accepted Answer

Recipient's public key

Answer

Data intended for a specific recipient is encrypted with the recipient's public key; only the recipient's corresponding private key can decrypt it.

Question 5

What distinguishes a stream cipher from a block cipher?

Accepted Answer

Stream ciphers encrypt one bit or byte at a time; block ciphers encrypt fixed-size chunks

Answer

Stream ciphers encrypt data bit-by-bit or byte-by-byte continuously, while block ciphers operate on fixed-size groups of bits, typically 64 or 128 bits.

SSCP Certification Practice Test

SSCP Certification Practice Test

SSCP Certification SSCP Cryptography Fundamentals 2