Lesson 3

Which of the following best describes the three fundamental categories of cryptographic functions?

• Hashing algorithms, symmetric ciphers, and asymmetric ciphers

• Digital certificates, digital signatures, and key escrow

• Full-disk, volume, and file encryption

• Transport Layer Security, IPsec, and WPA

Which security property is provided only by symmetric encryption when two parties share the same secret key?

• Authentication

• Confidentiality

• Non-repudiation

• Perfect Forward Secrecy

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with a 256-bit key has a keyspace of:

• 256 × 2 possible keys

What is the principal challenge of using symmetric cryptography between Alice and Bob over an untrusted network?

• Secure key exchange

• Excessive CPU overhead

• Key length limitations

• Inability to provide bulk encryption

Which statement accurately describes a drawback of asymmetric encryption compared to symmetric encryption?

• It is limited to 128-bit key lengths.

• Its private key can be derived from the public key.

• It cannot be used to distribute keys securely.

• It requires substantially more processing power for bulk data.

A 256-bit ECC private key provides roughly the same security strength as which RSA key length?

• 3,072 bits

• 16,384 bits

• 1,024 bits

• 512 bits

Which cryptographic function is specifically designed to be one-way and therefore supports integrity rather than confidentiality?

• Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman

• Hashing

• Key escrow

• Stream encryption

Which of the following hashing algorithms is currently considered the strongest and most widely recommended for new deployments?

• MD5

• ROT13

• SHA-256

• DES

Creating a message digest, encrypting that digest with an asymmetric private key, and sending it along with the message describes the creation of a:

• Digital signature

• Digital certificate

• Cipher suite

• Key escrow record

Which standard formally defines the use of RSA for digital signatures?

• ECDSA

• FIPS 140-2

• X.509

• PKCS #1