CSSLP Practice Test 7 — 10 Questions

Question 1

Your team is adopting a 'Secure by Default' posture. Which design requirement should be included in the development specification?

Accepted Answer

Disabling all unused services and ports in the production container image.. Secure by default means security controls are enabled without user intervention, such as disabling unnecessary features.

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Allowing administrative access to all users by default.

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Using self-signed certificates in the development environment only.

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Providing a configuration wizard to enable SSL after deployment.

Question 2

A security auditor reviews your code and flags that you are using 'hardcoded cryptographic keys' in the source repository. Which security concept is being violated?

Accepted Answer

Confidentiality. Hardcoded keys violate confidentiality because the keys are exposed to anyone with access to the source code.

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Availability

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Non-repudiation

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Integrity

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Accounting

Question 3

What is the goal of implementing a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) in your development lifecycle?

Accepted Answer

To maintain transparency of components and manage dependency risks.. The goal of an SBOM is to provide transparency into the software components and dependencies that make up an application, enabling organizations to identify, assess, and manage dependency-related risks such as vulnerable or unlicensed components. It is a visibility and risk-management artifact, not an automation or training replacement. This transparency is foundational to software supply chain security.

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To increase the speed of software compilation.

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To automatically patch vulnerabilities in code.

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To replace the need for secure coding training.

Question 4

You are reviewing code and find a hardcoded API key. Which security control should be implemented to securely manage this secret?

Accepted Answer

Use a secret management service. A dedicated secret management service (e.g., HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault) stores secrets encrypted, controls access via identity and policy, supports rotation and auditing, and keeps secrets out of source code entirely. This is the correct control because it addresses the root cause — secrets embedded in code — rather than masking the symptom. It also enables centralized revocation and rotation when a key is compromised.

Answer

Store it in a public environment variable

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Add it to the .gitignore file

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Obfuscate the key in the code

Question 5

You are reviewing the requirements for a legacy system integration. The system currently transmits credentials over plaintext protocols. What is the priority for the security requirements phase?

Accepted Answer

Mandate the migration to an encrypted transport layer in the SRS. The security requirements phase is where security controls are formally specified in the Software Requirements Specification (SRS). Since the legacy system transmits credentials in plaintext, the priority is to mandate a secure replacement—encrypted transport (e.g., TLS/SSL, SSH, or IPsec)—as a requirement in the SRS. This ensures the security need is captured, tracked, and implemented, rather than deferred or mitigated only at the network level. Documenting technical debt or requesting a waiver does not fix the vulnerability; it merely acknowledges it.

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Request a waiver for the legacy system

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Suggest the use of a VPN for the entire network

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Document the legacy protocol as a technical debt item

Question 6

Which TWO of the following practices are key components of a robust Software Security Governance framework?

Accepted Answer

Establishing and tracking security performance metrics.. Option D is correct because a robust Software Security Governance framework requires measurable oversight: establishing and tracking security performance metrics (e.g., mean time to remediate vulnerabilities, percentage of code scanned, open critical findings) enables an organization to monitor compliance, demonstrate accountability, and drive continuous improvement of its security posture. Option E is correct because governance fundamentally rests on defining clear security policies and standards (such as secure coding standards, SDLC security gates, and risk acceptance criteria) that set mandatory expectations and provide the baseline against which all development and security activities are measured and audited. The remaining options do not belong: outsourcing all security tasks to third-party vendors (A) transfers execution but does not constitute governance, which remains the organization's responsibility; mandating that all developers become certified hackers (B) is neither feasible nor a recognized governance control; and discontinuing all legacy applications (C) is an operational risk decision, not a governance component, and may be impractical or unnecessary.

Answer

Outsourcing all security tasks to third-party vendors.

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Mandating that all developers become certified hackers.

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Discontinuing all legacy applications.

Question 7

Which standard security practice should be applied to all passwords stored in a database?

Accepted Answer

Hashing with a unique salt per user. The correct practice is to hash passwords with a unique salt per user. Hashing is a one-way function that transforms the password into a fixed-length digest, making it infeasible to reverse. A unique salt per user prevents attackers from using precomputed rainbow tables and ensures that identical passwords produce different hashes. This is a fundamental requirement in standards like NIST SP 800-63B and OWASP ASVS.

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Encryption with a symmetric key

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Storing in a configuration file

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Base64 encoding

Question 8

You are performing a fuzzing campaign on a REST API. The API uses JSON Web Tokens (JWT). What is the most effective way to include these tokens in the fuzzer input?

Accepted Answer

Configure the fuzzer to inject a fresh, valid JWT in the Authorization header before each request.. The fuzzer must be configured to refresh the JWT periodically or use a script to inject a valid token into the Authorization header for every request.

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null

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Use the same JWT throughout the entire fuzzing duration.

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Exclude the Authorization header from the fuzzing target.

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Disable authentication for the entire API during the test.

Question 9

An organization is concerned about 'Typosquatting' in their build system. Which strategy is most effective at preventing the accidental inclusion of malicious, similarly-named packages?

Accepted Answer

Configure an allowlist-only proxy repository.. An allowlist-only proxy repository permits only explicitly approved packages (by name, version, and hash) to be fetched, so a malicious package with a similar name (e.g., 'reqeusts' instead of 'requests') is rejected even if a developer mistypes it. This is the most effective technical control because it removes reliance on human vigilance and blocks the attack at the dependency-resolution layer.

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Rely on the developer's ability to check spelling.

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Increase the frequency of penetration tests.

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Enable two-factor authentication on developer accounts.

Question 10

A developer is using an ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) framework. What risk remains even when using built-in ORM features?

Accepted Answer

SQL Injection through unsafe raw queries. Even with ORMs, developers can introduce SQL injection if they dynamically construct queries using string concatenation inside the ORM's raw query methods.

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Cross-Site Scripting

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Brute force attacks

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Buffer overflows