Practice Free 212-81 EC-Council Certified Encryption Specialist (ECES) Exam Questions Answers With Explanation

VeraCrypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeraCrypt

VeraCrypt is a source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or (in Windows) the entire storage device with pre-boot authentication.

multi-alphabet encryption

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyalphabetic_cipher

Two different shifts create two different alphabets.

For +1 and +2

Plaintext alphabet

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

2 ciphertext alphabets

B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A

C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B

Correct answers: RSA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(cryptosystem)

RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) is a public-key cryptosystem that is widely used for secure data transmission. It is also one of the oldest. The acronym RSA comes from the surnames of Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, who publicly described the algorithm in 1977. An equivalent system was developed secretly, in 1973 at GCHQ (the British signals intelligence agency), by the English mathematician Clifford Cocks. That system was declassified in 1997.

In a public-key cryptosystem, the encryption key is public and distinct from the decryption key, which is kept secret (private). An RSA user creates and publishes a public key based on two large prime numbers, along with an auxiliary value. The prime numbers are kept secret. Messages can be encrypted by anyone, via the public key, but can only be decoded by someone who knows the prime numbers.

The security of RSA relies on the practical difficulty of factoring the product of two large prime numbers, the "factoring problem". Breaking RSA encryption is known as the RSA problem. Whether it is as difficult as the factoring problem is an open question. There are no published methods to defeat the system if a large enough key is used.

FISH

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISH_(cipher)

The FISH (FIbonacci SHrinking) stream cipher is a fast software based stream cipher using Lagged Fibonacci generators, plus a concept from the shrinking generator cipher. It was published by Siemens in 1993. FISH is quite fast in software and has a huge key length. However, in the same paper where he proposed Pike, Ross Anderson showed that FISH can be broken with just a few thousand bits of known plaintext.

00010010

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XOR_cipher

1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0

1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

________________

0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0

Explanation

Output feedback (OFB)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation#Output_feedback_(OFB)

The output feedback (OFB) mode makes a block cipher into a synchronous stream cipher. It generates keystream blocks, which are then XORed with the plaintext blocks to get the ciphertext. Just as with other stream ciphers, flipping a bit in the ciphertext produces a flipped bit in the plaintext at the same location. This property allows many error-correcting codes to function normally even when applied before encryption.

Explanation

CBC-MAC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBC-MAC

A cipher block chaining message authentication code (CBC-MAC) is a technique for constructing a message authentication code from a block cipher. The message is encrypted with some block cipher algorithm in CBC mode to create a chain of blocks such that each block depends on the proper encryption of the previous block. This interdependence ensures that a change to any of the plaintext bits will cause the final encrypted block to change in a way that cannot be predicted or counteracted without knowing the key to the block cipher. Using in WPA2 for integrity check and provides security against a replay attack.

Explanation

Homophonic Substitution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_cipher#Homophonic_substitution

An early attempt to increase the difficulty of frequency analysis attacks on substitution ciphers was to disguise plaintext letter frequencies by homophony. In these ciphers, plaintext letters map to more than one ciphertext symbol. Usually, the highest-frequency plaintext symbols are given more equivalents than lower frequency letters. In this way, the frequency distribution is flattened, making analysis more difficult.

Explanation

Alice's public key

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exchange

In asymmetric (public key) cryptography, both communicating parties (i.e. both Alice and Bob) have two keys of their own — just to be clear, that's four keys total. Each party has their own public key, which they share with the world, and their own private key which they ... well, which they keep private, of course but, more than that, which they keep as a closely guarded secret. The magic of public key cryptography is that a message encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the private key. Alice will encrypt her message with Bob's public key, and even though Eve knows she used Bob's public key, and even though Eve knows Bob's public key herself, she is unable to decrypt the message. Only Bob, using his secret key, can decrypt the message ... assuming he's kept it secret, of course.

ADFVGX Cipher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADFGVX_cipher

ADFGVX cipher was a field cipher used by the German Army on the Western Front during World War I. ADFGVX was in fact an extension of an earlier cipher called ADFGX.

Invented by Lieutenant Fritz Nebel (1891–1977) and introduced in March 1918, the cipher was a fractionating transposition cipher which combined a modified Polybius square with a single columnar transposition.

IDEA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Data_Encryption_Algorithm

In cryptography, the International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA), originally called Improved Proposed Encryption Standard (IPES), is a symmetric-key block cipher designed by James Massey of ETH Zurich and Xuejia Lai and was first described in 1991. The algorithm was intended as a replacement for the Data Encryption Standard (DES). IDEA is a minor revision of an earlier cipher Proposed Encryption Standard (PES).

The cipher was designed under a research contract with the Hasler Foundation, which became part of Ascom-Tech AG. The cipher was patented in a number of countries but was freely available for non-commercial use. The name "IDEA" is also a trademark. The last patents expired in 2012, and IDEA is now patent-free and thus completely free for all uses.

IDEA was used in Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) v2.0 and was incorporated after the original cipher used in v1.0, BassOmatic, was found to be insecure. IDEA is an optional algorithm in the OpenPGP standard.

Explanation

FISH

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISH_(cipher)

The FISH (FIbonacci SHrinking) stream cipher is a fast software based stream cipher using Lagged Fibonacci generators, plus a concept from the shrinking generator cipher. It was published by Siemens in 1993. FISH is quite fast in software and has a huge key length. However, in the same paper where he proposed Pike, Ross Anderson showed that FISH can be broken with just a few thousand bits of known plaintext.

Explanation

Internet Key Exchange (IKE)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Key_Exchange

Internet Key Exchange (IKE, sometimes IKEv1 or IKEv2, depending on version) is the protocol used to set up a security association (SA) in the IPsec protocol suite. IKE builds upon the Oakley protocol and ISAKMP. IKE uses X.509 certificates for authentication ? either pre-shared or distributed using DNS (preferably with DNSSEC) ? and a Diffie–Hellman key exchange to set up a shared session secret from which cryptographic keys are derived.

PGP

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions and to increase the security of e-mail communications. Phil Zimmermann developed PGP in 1991.

Explanation

K3 and K4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator

The German Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, BSI) has established four criteria for quality of deterministic random number generators.They are summarized here:

K1 – There should be a high probability that generated sequences of random numbers are different from each other.

K2 – A sequence of numbers is indistinguishable from "truly random" numbers according to specified statistical tests. The tests are the monobit test (equal numbers of ones and zeros in the sequence), poker test (a special instance of the chi-squared test), runs test (counts the frequency of runs of various lengths), longruns test (checks whether there exists any run of length 34 or greater in 20 000 bits of the sequence)—both from BSI and NIST, and the autocorrelation test. In essence, these requirements are a test of how well a bit sequence: has zeros and ones equally often; after a sequence of n zeros (or ones), the next bit a one (or zero) with probability one-half; and any selected subsequence contains no information about the next element(s) in the sequence.

K3 – It should be impossible for an attacker (for all practical purposes) to calculate, or otherwise guess, from any given subsequence, any previous or future values in the sequence, nor any inner state of the generator.

K4 – It should be impossible, for all practical purposes, for an attacker to calculate, or guess from an inner state of the generator, any previous numbers in the sequence or any previous inner generator states.

For cryptographic applications, only generators meeting the K3 or K4 standards are acceptable.

Explanation

DESX

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DES-X

In cryptography, DES-X (or DESX) is a variant on the DES (Data Encryption Standard) symmetric-key block cipher intended to increase the complexity of a brute-force attack using a technique called key whitening.

Correct answers: One-way, Fixed length output

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function

A cryptographic hash function is a mathematical algorithm that maps data of arbitrary size (often called the "message") to a bit array of a fixed size (the "hash value", "hash", or "message digest"). It is a one-way function, that is, a function which is practically infeasible to invert.

Explanation

Asymmetric

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography

Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is a cryptographic system that uses pairs of keys: public keys, which may be disseminated widely, and private keys, which are known only to the owner. The generation of such keys depends on cryptographic algorithms based on mathematical problems to produce one-way functions. Effective security only requires keeping the private key private; the public key can be openly distributed without compromising security.

Explanation

Kerberos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos_(protocol)

Kerberos is a computer-network authentication protocol that works on the basis of tickets to allow nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner. The protocol was named after the character Kerberos (or Cerberus) from Greek mythology, the ferocious three-headed guard dog of Hades. Its designers aimed it primarily at a client–server model and it provides mutual authentication—both the user and the server verify each other's identity. Kerberos protocol messages are protected against eavesdropping and replay attacks.

Kerberos builds on symmetric key cryptography and requires a trusted third party, and optionally may use public-key cryptography during certain phases of authentication. Kerberos uses UDP port 88 by default.

RSA

The RSA encryption algorithm is one of the most widely used public key encryption algorithms that have ever been invented. It was created by the three scientists Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman in 1977, and today it is increasingly being used in the network area.

Correct answers: Transport mode and Tunnel mode

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPsec#Modes_of_operation

The IPsec protocols AH and ESP can be implemented in a host-to-host transport mode, as well as in a network tunneling mode.

Explanation

Correct answers: Mersenne Primes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_prime

Mersenne prime is a prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a prime number of the form M_n = 2^n ? 1 for some integer n. They are named after Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, who studied them in the early 17th century. If n is a composite number then so is 2^n ? 1. Therefore, an equivalent definition of the Mersenne primes is that they are the prime numbers of the form M_p = 2^p ? 1 for some prime p.

Chosen plaintext

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chosen-plaintext_attack

A chosen-plaintext attack (CPA) is an attack model for cryptanalysis which presumes that the attacker can obtain the ciphertexts for arbitrary plaintexts. The goal of the attack is to gain information that reduces the security of the encryption scheme.

Steganography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

Steganography is the practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video.

The first recorded use of the term was in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius in his Steganographia, a treatise on cryptography and steganography, disguised as a book on magic. Generally, the hidden messages appear to be (or to be part of) something else: images, articles, shopping lists, or some other cover text. For example, the hidden message may be in invisible ink between the visible lines of a private letter. Some implementations of steganography that lack a shared secret are forms of security through obscurity, and key-dependent steganographic schemes adhere to Kerckhoffs's principle.

Kerkchoff's principle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle

Kerckhoffs's principle (also called Kerckhoffs's desideratum, assumption, axiom, doctrine or law) of cryptography was stated by Netherlands born cryptographer Auguste Kerckhoffs in the 19th century: A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge.

Kerckhoffs's principle was reformulated (or possibly independently formulated) by American mathematician Claude Shannon as "the enemy knows the system", i.e., "one ought to design systems under the assumption that the enemy will immediately gain full familiarity with them". In that form, it is called Shannon's maxim. This concept is widely embraced by cryptographers, in contrast to "security through obscurity", which is not.

Explanation

Correct answers: Co-prime numbers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprime_integers

Two integers a and b are said to be relatively prime, mutually prime, or coprime if the only positive integer (factor) that evenly divides both of them is 1. Consequently, any prime number that divides one of a or b does not divide the other. This is equivalent to their greatest common divisor (gcd) being 1.

The numerator and denominator of a reduced fraction are coprime. The numbers 14 and 25 are coprime, since 1 is their only common divisor. On the other hand, 14 and 21 are not coprime, because they are both divisible by 7.

Explanation

MD5

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5

The MD5 message-digest algorithm is a widely used hash function producing a 128-bit hash value. Although MD5 was initially designed to be used as a cryptographic hash function, it has been found to suffer from extensive vulnerabilities. It can still be used as a checksum to verify data integrity, but only against unintentional corruption. It remains suitable for other non-cryptographic purposes, for example for determining the partition for a particular key in a partitioned database.

MD5 was designed by Ronald Rivest in 1991 to replace an earlier hash function MD4, and was specified in 1992 as RFC 1321.

Explanation

Correct answer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feistel_cipher

Feistel cipher (also known as Luby–Rackoff block cipher) is a symmetric structure used in the construction of block ciphers, named after the German-born physicist and cryptographer Horst Feistel who did pioneering research while working for IBM (USA); it is also commonly known as a Feistel network. A large proportion of block ciphers use the scheme, including the US Data Encryption Standard, the Soviet-developed GOST and the more recent Blowfish and Twofish ciphers. In a Feistel cipher, encryption and decryption are very similar operations, and both consist of iteratively running a function called a "round function" a fixed number of times.

By substituting each letter for the letter from the opposite end of the alphabet (i.e. A becomes Z, B becomes Y, etc.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atbash

The Atbash cipher is a particular type of monoalphabetic cipher formed by taking the alphabet (or abjad, syllabary, etc.) and mapping it to its reverse, so that the first letter becomes the last letter, the second letter becomes the second to last letter, and so on.

Explanation

RSA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(cryptosystem)

RSA use for encryption email and create digital signatures

Explanation

FORK-256

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FORK-256

FORK-256 was introduced at the 2005 NIST Hash workshop and published the following year.[6] FORK-256 uses 512-bit blocks and implements preset constants that change after each repetition. Each block is hashed into a 256-bit block through four branches that divides each 512 block into sixteen 32-bit words that are further encrypted and rearranged.

Chosen Plaintext Attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chosen-plaintext_attack

A chosen-plaintext attack (CPA) is an attack model for cryptanalysis which presumes that the attacker can obtain the ciphertexts for arbitrary plaintexts. The goal of the attack is to gain information that reduces the security of the encryption scheme.

Euler's totient

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_totient_function

In number theory, Euler's totient function counts the positive integers up to a given integer n that are relatively prime to n.

Random bits intermixed with a hash to increase randomness and reduce collisions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_(cryptography)

Salt is random data that is used as an additional input to a one-way function that hashes data, a password or passphrase. Salts are used to safeguard passwords in storage. Historically a password was stored in plaintext on a system, but over time additional safeguards were developed to protect a user's password against being read from the system. A salt is one of those methods.

MD5

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5

The MD5 message-digest algorithm is a widely used hash function producing a 128-bit hash value. Although MD5 was initially designed to be used as a cryptographic hash function, it has been found to suffer from extensive vulnerabilities. It can still be used as a checksum to verify data integrity, but only against unintentional corruption. It remains suitable for other non-cryptographic purposes, for example for determining the partition for a particular key in a partitioned database.

MD5 was designed by Ronald Rivest in 1991 to replace an earlier hash function MD4, and was specified in 1992 as RFC 1321

Explanation

Revoked certificates

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Certificate_Status_Protocol

The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is an Internet protocol used for obtaining the revocation status of an X.509 digital certificate.It is described in RFC 6960 and is on the Internet standards track. It was created as an alternative to certificate revocation lists (CRL), specifically addressing certain problems associated with using CRLs in a public key infrastructure (PKI). Messages communicated via OCSP are encoded in ASN.1 and are usually communicated over HTTP. The "request/response" nature of these messages leads to OCSP servers being termed OCSP responders.

IPSec has two different modes: transport mode and tunnel mode.

Only the tunnel mode can be used

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPsec

In tunnel mode, the entire IP packet is encrypted and authenticated. It is then encapsulated into a new IP packet with a new IP header. Tunnel mode is used to create virtual private networks for network-to-network communications (e.g. between routers to link sites), host-to-network communications (e.g. remote user access) and host-to-host communications (e.g. private chat).

Explanation

Key Schedule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_schedule

In cryptography, the so-called product ciphers are a certain kind of cipher, where the (de-)ciphering of data is typically done as an iteration of rounds. The setup for each round is generally the same, except for round-specific fixed values called a round constant, and round-specific data derived from the cipher key called a round key. A key schedule is an algorithm that calculates all the round keys from the key.

WPA2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Access

WPA (sometimes referred to as the draft IEEE 802.11i standard) became available in 2003. The Wi-Fi Alliance intended it as an intermediate measure in anticipation of the availability of the more secure and complex WPA2, which became available in 2004 and is a common shorthand for the full IEEE 802.11i (or IEEE 802.11i-2004) standard.

Menezes-Qu-Vanstone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQV

MQV (Menezes–Qu–Vanstone) is an authenticated protocol for key agreement based on the Diffie–Hellman scheme. Like other authenticated Diffie–Hellman schemes, MQV provides protection against an active attacker. The protocol can be modified to work in an arbitrary finite group, and, in particular, elliptic curve groups, where it is known as elliptic curve MQV (ECMQV).

MQV was initially proposed by Alfred Menezes, Minghua Qu and Scott Vanstone in 1995. It was modified with Law and Solinas in 1998.

Reversible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function

Hash functions are not reversible.

Explanation

Work factor

Work factor - the time and effort required to break a security measure.

Confusion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_and_diffusion#Definition

Confusion means that each binary digit (bit) of the ciphertext should depend on several parts of the key, obscuring the connections between the two.

The property of confusion hides the relationship between the ciphertext and the key.

This property makes it difficult to find the key from the ciphertext and if a single bit in a key is changed, the calculation of the values of most or all of the bits in the ciphertext will be affected.

Confusion increases the ambiguity of ciphertext and it is used by both block and stream ciphers.

Incorrect answer:

Avalanche - The avalanche effect is the desirable property of cryptographic algorithms, typically block ciphers and cryptographic hash functions, wherein if an input is changed slightly (for example, flipping a single bit), the output changes significantly (e.g., half the output bits flip). In the case of high-quality block ciphers, such a small change in either the key or the plaintext should cause a drastic change in the ciphertext. The actual term was first used by Horst Feistel, although the concept dates back to at least Shannon's diffusion.

Diffusion - Diffusion means that if we change a single bit of the plaintext, then (statistically) half of the bits in the ciphertext should change, and similarly, if we change one bit of the ciphertext, then approximately one half of the plaintext bits should change.[2] Since a bit can have only two states, when they are all re-evaluated and changed from one seemingly random position to another, half of the bits will have changed state.

Substitution - Substitution technique is a classical encryption technique where the characters present in the original message are replaced by the other characters or numbers or by symbols.

Explanation

Brute force

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-force_attack

Brute-force attack consists of an attacker submitting many passwords or passphrases with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. The attacker systematically checks all possible passwords and passphrases until the correct one is found. Alternatively, the attacker can attempt to guess the key which is typically created from the password using a key derivation function. This is known as an exhaustive key search.

plaintext

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaintext

In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. Cleartext usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted ("in clear").

Explanation

MD5

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5

MD5 was designed by Ronald Rivest in 1991 to replace an earlier hash function MD4, and was specified in 1992 as RFC 1321.

Encrypting with RSA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(cryptosystem)

RSA Encrypting a message m (number) with the public key (n, e) is calculated:

M' := m^e %n

Explanation

CA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority

A certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. This allows others (relying parties) to rely upon signatures or on assertions made about the private key that corresponds to the certified public key. A CA acts as a trusted third party—trusted both by the subject (owner) of the certificate and by the party relying upon the certificate. The format of these certificates is specified by the X.509 or EMV standard.

512

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FORK-256

FORK-256 was introduced at the 2005 NIST Hash workshop and published the following year.[6] FORK-256 uses 512-bit blocks and implements preset constants that change after each repetition. Each block is hashed into a 256-bit block through four branches that divides each 512 block into sixteen 32-bit words that are further encrypted and rearranged

Integrity. In information security, data integrity means maintaining and assuring the accuracy and completeness of data over its entire lifecycle. This means that data cannot be modified in an unauthorized or undetected manner.

An important application of hashes is verification of message integrity. Comparing message digests (hash digests over the message) calculated before, and after, transmission can determine whether any changes have been made to the message or file.

SHA-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1

SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) is a cryptographic hash function which takes an input and produces a 160-bit (20-byte) hash value known as a message digest – typically rendered as a hexadecimal number, 40 digits long. It was designed by the United States National Security Agency, and is a U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard.

Diffusion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_and_diffusion

Diffusion means that if we change a single bit of the plaintext, then (statistically) half of the bits in the ciphertext should change, and similarly, if we change one bit of the ciphertext, then approximately one half of the plaintext bits should change.[2] Since a bit can have only two states, when they are all re-evaluated and changed from one seemingly random position to another, half of the bits will have changed state.

The idea of diffusion is to hide the relationship between the ciphertext and the plain text.

This will make it hard for an attacker who tries to find out the plain text and it increases the redundancy of plain text by spreading it across the rows and columns; it is achieved through transposition of algorithm and it is used by block ciphers only.

Explanation

y^2 = x^3 + Ax + B

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic-curve_cryptography

For current cryptographic purposes, an elliptic curve is a plane curve over a finite field (rather than the real numbers) which consists of the points satisfying the equation: