CCDV-F Practice Test 6 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A developer builds a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system where Claude answers questions using documents stored in an internal knowledge base. The security team is concerned that a malicious document could contain instructions that hijack the model. Which design choice most effectively reduces this indirect prompt injection risk?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Treat retrieved document content as data only, place it in a clearly delimited user turn, and instruct the model to never follow instructions found inside retrieved content.. Indirect prompt injection occurs when untrusted retrieved content is interpreted as instructions. The most effective design mitigation is to keep retrieved text in a clearly delimited data section and tell the model never to follow instructions found there. This changes the model's parsing context and makes injected commands less likely to be executed, while supporting output validation. Encryption and summarization do not address the trust boundary.

Answer

Ask the model to summarize each retrieved document before answering the user's question.

Answer

Store all documents in a vector database encrypted at rest with AES-256.

Answer

Increase the number of retrieved documents so the malicious content is diluted among many chunks.

Question 2

A team wants Claude to query their internal ticketing system through MCP. The operations are read-only lookups and the team wants the model to decide when a lookup is needed based on the conversation. Which MCP primitive is the appropriate choice?

Accepted Answer

MCP Tools exposed by the server.. Because Claude must decide on its own when to look up a ticket, the capability needs to be a callable action with a described schema, which is exactly what an MCP tool provides. Resources and prompts are not model-selected actions, and sampling reverses the request direction, so a tool is the correct primitive for this read-only lookup.

Answer

MCP Resources exposed by the server.

Answer

MCP Prompts exposed by the server.

Answer

MCP Sampling requests initiated by the server.

Question 3

A developer is creating an MCP server that exposes a tool to query a PostgreSQL database. The tool definition includes a parameter 'sql_query' that accepts a raw SQL string. During a security review, it was flagged that this design could allow SQL injection if Claude generates malicious SQL. Which change should the developer make to mitigate this risk?

Accepted Answer

Replace the raw SQL parameter with structured parameters such as table name, columns, and filters, and construct the SQL query internally using parameterized statements.. The best mitigation is to replace raw SQL with structured parameters and construct queries internally using parameterized statements. This eliminates the injection vector by design. Other options either rely on unreliable prompting, weak validation, or partial mitigation that does not address the core vulnerability. Structured parameters also improve usability and safety.

Answer

Limit the database user's permissions to read-only, so even if malicious SQL is executed, it cannot modify data.

Answer

Add a description to the tool instructing Claude to never generate malicious SQL.

Answer

Validate the 'sql_query' parameter by checking that it only contains SELECT statements and no semicolons.

Question 4

A fintech company deploys a Claude-powered agent that can call internal tools such as `get_transaction_history` and `initiate_transfer`. During a red-team exercise, an attacker crafts a user message that causes the agent to call `initiate_transfer` to an attacker-controlled account. Which TWO controls most directly mitigate this tool-abuse risk? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Validate tool arguments against a server-side allowlist of permitted destination accounts and enforce authorization checks in the tool implementation.. Tool abuse is mitigated by enforcing trust boundaries outside the model. A human approval gate for high-impact actions prevents unauthorized execution, and server-side argument validation with authorization ensures the tool only acts on permitted inputs. Prompt instructions and temperature changes are not enforceable, and logging without prevention is only detective. Together, the two preventive controls block the attack even if the model is manipulated.

Answer

Add a system prompt that tells Claude to never call `initiate_transfer` unless the user explicitly asks for it.

Answer

Log all tool calls and review them weekly for suspicious patterns.

Answer

Increase the model's temperature to make its behavior less predictable to attackers.

Question 5

A developer is building an MCP client that connects to a remote MCP server over HTTP. After the initial handshake, the client needs to discover what prompts the server exposes so they can be surfaced in a slash-command menu. Which MCP capability should the client invoke?

Accepted Answer

prompts/list. Prompt templates are a distinct MCP primitive from tools and resources, and they are enumerated with the prompts/list request. Because the goal is to build a slash-command menu of reusable prompts, the client must call prompts/list after the initialize handshake, then optionally fetch a specific prompt with prompts/get when the user selects it.

Answer

resources/list

Answer

tools/list

Answer

initialize

Question 6

An agent built with the Anthropic SDK is processing a long conversation and begins to exceed the model's context window. The developer wants to preserve recent turns and key facts while reducing token usage. Which approach best matches how the SDK and Claude are designed to handle this?

Accepted Answer

Summarize older portions of the conversation into a compact message and prepend it, keeping the most recent turns verbatim.. Because the API is stateless, context management is the developer's responsibility. Summarizing older conversation segments while retaining recent turns verbatim balances token economy with continuity. This pattern is widely used in long-running agents to stay within the context window without losing the facts that matter.

Answer

Rely on the model's built-in long-term memory to automatically recall earlier turns without resending them.

Answer

Increase the temperature setting so the model can compress the conversation on its own.

Answer

Remove all prior messages and send only the latest user turn to avoid any risk of exceeding the limit.

Question 7

A developer is working in a large repository and wants Claude Code to understand the project structure and available tools before making changes. They run `claude` in the project root. Which action best ensures Claude Code has the necessary context for the session?

Accepted Answer

Run `/init` to generate a CLAUDE.md file that documents the project structure and common commands.. Using `/init` generates a CLAUDE.md file that persists across sessions and captures essential project details like build commands and architecture. This is the intended mechanism for providing durable context in a new codebase. Other options either do not exist, provide only temporary input, or do not enhance Claude Code's understanding of the project.

Answer

Manually paste the entire directory tree into the first prompt.

Answer

Run `claude --verbose` to enable detailed logging of all file accesses.

Answer

Execute `claude --reset` to clear previous session memory and start fresh.

Question 8

A developer is using the Claude API to generate creative writing pieces. The application often sends the same 2,000-token instruction set as a prefix to every request. Which feature can reduce the cost of processing this repeated prefix?

Accepted Answer

Prompt Caching. Prompt Caching is specifically designed to reduce costs when the same prefix is reused across multiple API calls. By caching the 2,000-token instruction set, subsequent calls avoid reprocessing those tokens at full input rates, directly lowering the cost. Other features like streaming, Batch API, or model selection do not target the redundant processing of a repeated prefix.

Answer

Batch API

Answer

Streaming responses

Answer

Using a smaller model

Question 9

A developer is optimizing a Claude-powered chatbot that handles 50,000 daily conversations. Each conversation starts with a 1,200-token system prompt that includes detailed instructions and examples. The system prompt is identical across all conversations. The developer wants to reduce input token costs. Which technique should be applied?

Accepted Answer

Enable prompt caching for the system prompt.. Prompt caching is designed for scenarios where a large, static prefix is reused across many requests. By caching the 1,200-token system prompt, the developer pays full price only once, and subsequent requests benefit from reduced input token costs. This directly targets the repetitive cost without sacrificing quality or altering the conversation flow.

Answer

Shorten the system prompt by removing examples.

Answer

Move the system prompt to the first user message.

Answer

Switch to a cheaper model for all conversations.

Question 10

A developer is using the Claude API to generate marketing copy for 50 different product lines. Each request includes a unique set of product details and a unique creative brief. The developer wants to minimize cost while ensuring high-quality output. Which model should they choose?

Accepted Answer

claude-3-sonnet-20240229. Marketing copy generation requires creativity and coherence but not the deep reasoning of Opus. Sonnet provides a balanced combination of quality and cost, making it the most suitable for this task. Haiku might sacrifice quality, while Opus would be overkill and more expensive. Claude 2.1 is outdated. Therefore, Sonnet is the optimal choice to minimize cost while ensuring high-quality output.

Answer

claude-3-opus-20240229

Answer

claude-2.1

Answer

claude-3-haiku-20240307