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Cryptography

5 minutes 5 Questions

Cryptography is a technique used to secure and protect data from unauthorized access and tampering. It involves encryption and decryption processes, which converts data into unreadable formats (cipher-text) and back to the original format (plain-text) respectively. Cryptography can protect data in …

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CompTIA A+ - Cryptography Example Questions

Test your knowledge of Cryptography

Question 1

A security consultant is asked to review the cryptographic configurations used during data transmission between two offices. The configuration mentions using AES with a 128-bit key for symmetric encryption and RSA with a 2048-bit key for key exchange. Which type of encryption system is in use?

Correct Answer: Hybrid encryption

Hybrid encryption uses a combination of both symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms. In this case, AES with a symmetric key is used for data encryption, and RSA with an asymmetric key is being used to securely exchange those keys, making this a hybrid encryption system.

Question 2

A large organization receives a suspicious email claiming to come from the CEO, but the message fails email authentication measures. What cryptographic mechanism can the organization implement to better determine whether the sender is legitimate in the future?

Correct Answer: Digital signature

Digital signatures can be used to authenticate the sender's identity and ensure the message integrity, thus confirming the authenticity of the email sender. Message encryption and key exchanges don't provide sender authentication. One-time pads and hashing are not directly applicable to the scenario, and two-factor authentication is more related to access control.

Question 3

An organization discovers that the symmetric keys used for secure file transfers were not dropped from memory after usage, leading to potential key exposure. What key management best practice was not followed?

Correct Answer: Key destruction

Key destruction is the process of securely removing keys from memory after usage, preventing unauthorized access to the keys. Not destroying the keys after use violates a key management best practice. The other options, like key generation, rotation, escrow, isolation, and substitution, are not related to removing keys from memory.

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