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SY0-701 General Security Concepts Practice Question

Exhibit

Password audit snapshot:
User     Stored value
alice    5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b
bob      5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b
carol    2bb80d537b1da3e38bd30361aa855686

Audit note:
Two accounts have the same stored value, and the security team wants to reduce the value of rainbow-table attacks if the database is stolen.

Based on the exhibit, what change would best protect the password database against precomputed attacks and make identical passwords less obvious?

⚠ Common exam trap

Watch out — candidates often confuse encryption with hashing or think that obfuscation techniques like case changes provide security, when in fact only salting with a unique random value prevents precomputed attacks and hides password equality.

Answer choices

Why each option matters

Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.

Correct answer & explanation

✓

Add a unique salt to each password before hashing it.

Adding a unique salt to each password before hashing ensures that even if two users have the same password, their hashes will differ. This defeats precomputed attacks like rainbow tables because the attacker would need to compute a separate table for each salt value, which is computationally infeasible. Salting is a standard defense recommended by NIST SP 800-63B and implemented in modern systems like bcrypt, scrypt, and PBKDF2.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

  • ✗

    Encrypt each password with the same server key before storing it in the database.

    Why it's wrong here

    Encryption keeps data confidential, but password storage usually needs one-way verification rather than reversible recovery. If the same key is reused, identical passwords can still produce predictable results, and an attacker who steals the key can decrypt everything. The problem in the exhibit is about resisting precomputed attacks, which is a hashing problem, not a reversible encryption problem.

  • ✓

    Add a unique salt to each password before hashing it.

    Why this is correct

    Salting is the best fix because it adds unique random data to each password before hashing, so identical passwords no longer produce the same stored value. That defeats rainbow tables and makes precomputed attacks far less useful. It also means attackers cannot easily compare two users' hashes to confirm they chose the same password, which improves both security and privacy.

  • ✗

    Use a digital signature on each password record so the database can verify authenticity.

    Why it's wrong here

    Digital signatures prove integrity and authenticity of data from a signer, but they are not a password-storage method. They do not hide the password value or prevent rainbow-table attacks. The exhibit is about protecting stored password verifiers against theft and precomputation, so signing the record would not solve the underlying authentication risk.

  • ✗

    Store the password hashes in uppercase so attackers cannot compare them easily.

    Why it's wrong here

    Changing the character case of the hash output does not add security; it only changes how the same value is displayed. Attackers can normalize the text immediately and still compare or crack the hashes. The weakness in the exhibit is the lack of unique per-user randomness, not formatting. Salting changes the actual cryptographic input, which uppercase text does not.

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Same concept, more angles

1 more way this is tested on SY0-701

These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.

Variation 1. Based on the exhibit, which change would most improve the security of the stored password data?

medium
  • A.Store the passwords in encrypted form so they can be recovered later if needed.
  • ✓ B.Add a unique salt per password and use a slow password hashing algorithm.
  • C.Replace the hash with a plain SHA-256 digest because it is modern and widely supported.
  • D.Append the application name to each password before hashing to make the hashes unique.

Why B: Adding a unique salt per password prevents precomputed rainbow table attacks, and using a slow password hashing algorithm (like bcrypt, PBKDF2, or Argon2) increases the computational cost of brute-force attacks. This combination ensures that even if the password hashes are compromised, attackers cannot efficiently crack them. Salting also ensures that identical passwords produce different hashes, eliminating the ability to detect shared passwords across accounts.

JA

Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security

Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva

This SY0-701 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SY0-701 exam.