CISSP Practice Question: A developer is tasked with securely storing user…

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

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

• ✗

  Do not store passwords; use federated identity

  Why it's wrong here

  While federated identity management (e.g., OAuth, OpenID Connect) is an excellent security practice that offloads password storage to a trusted identity provider, it does not directly address the task of securely storing user passwords within the application itself if direct authentication is required for some users or if the application serves as an identity provider. This option avoids the problem rather than solving it, and may not be universally applicable for all application architectures or user bases. Therefore, it's not the primary solution for the stated problem of storing passwords securely.

• ✓

  Hash the password with bcrypt using a unique salt per user

  Why this is correct

  Hashing the password with bcrypt using a unique salt per user is the industry-standard best practice for secure password storage. Bcrypt is an adaptive, slow hashing algorithm specifically designed to be computationally intensive, making brute-force and rainbow table attacks extremely difficult and time-consuming, even with powerful hardware. The unique salt ensures that identical passwords result in different hashes, preventing pre-computation attacks and making dictionary attacks against multiple users impractical.

• ✗

  Encrypt the password using AES and store the ciphertext

  Why it's wrong here

  Encrypting passwords with AES and storing the ciphertext is fundamentally insecure for password storage because encryption is a reversible process. If an attacker gains access to the encryption key, all encrypted passwords can be easily decrypted and the original plaintext passwords recovered. This approach introduces a critical single point of failure and a significant key management challenge, as the key must be accessible to the application for decryption, making it vulnerable.

• ✗

  Hash the password with MD5 and store the hash

  Why it's wrong here

  Hashing passwords with MD5 is an outdated and highly insecure method. MD5 is a fast, cryptographic hash function not designed for password storage, making it highly susceptible to brute-force attacks, especially with modern hardware. Furthermore, without the use of a unique salt, MD5 hashes are vulnerable to pre-computed rainbow tables, which can quickly reveal original passwords for common hashes, compromising user accounts en masse.

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