SSCP Certification SSCP Cryptography Fundamentals 4

Question 1

What is key stretching, and why is it used in password-based cryptography?

Accepted Answer

Applying a function repeatedly to make brute-force attacks slower and costlier

Answer

Key stretching algorithms like PBKDF2, bcrypt, and Argon2 apply a hash function thousands of times to a password, making brute-force and dictionary attacks computationally expensive.

Question 2

Which digital signature algorithm is based on elliptic curve cryptography and is used in modern TLS certificates?

Accepted Answer

ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm)

Answer

ECDSA uses elliptic curve mathematics to produce digital signatures, offering equivalent security to RSA with much smaller key sizes, making it popular in TLS, SSH, and cryptocurrency.

Question 3

In a hybrid encryption scheme, how is asymmetric encryption typically used?

Accepted Answer

To encrypt only the symmetric session key used for bulk data encryption

Answer

Hybrid encryption uses asymmetric cryptography to securely exchange a symmetric session key, and the much faster symmetric cipher encrypts the actual data — combining security with performance.

Question 4

What is the purpose of an initialization vector (IV) in symmetric encryption?

Accepted Answer

To ensure identical plaintexts produce different ciphertexts when encrypted with the same key

Answer

An IV is a random value used along with the encryption key to ensure that encrypting the same plaintext twice with the same key produces different ciphertext, preventing pattern analysis.

Question 5

Which attack exploits the birthday paradox to find hash collisions more efficiently than brute force?

Accepted Answer

Birthday attack

Answer

A birthday attack exploits the birthday paradox probability to find two inputs with the same hash in approximately 2^(n/2) operations rather than 2^n, significantly reducing collision resistance.

SSCP Certification Practice Test

SSCP Certification Practice Test

SSCP Certification SSCP Cryptography Fundamentals 4