Cyber Security Questions Arizona Western College
questions and verified answers 2026 exam lOMoAR cPSD| 22962964
Cyber Security Questions Arizona Western College
questions and verified answers 2026 exam
1. Calculate the timing of password-guessing attacks:
(a) If passwords are three uppercase alphabetic characters long, how much time would it
take to determine a particular password, assuming that testing an individual password
requires 5 seconds? How much time if testing requires 0.001 seconds?
Given
Password = uppercase alphabetic characters
Characters = 3 (26*26*26)
Number of ways to generate characters = 263
Number of ways = 17,576
Time taken = 17,576 × 5 Seconds
Time taken = 87,880 seconds
Which is equivalent to 24.411 hrs.… a few seconds longer than a day…
If time take was 0.001 seconds then;
Time taken = 17,576 ×0.001
Time taken = 17.576 seconds.
(b) Argue for a particular amount of time as the starting point for “secure.” That is,
suppose an attacker plans to use a brute-force attack to determine a password. For what
pg. 1
, Cyber Security Questions Arizona Western College
questions and verified answers 2026 exam lOMoAR cPSD| 22962964
value of x (the total amount of time to try as many passwords as necessary) would the
attacker find this attack prohibitively long?
In the case of access passwords such as login information, the expected value of x greater that
the frequency of changing the password. For accessing data like a password for protecting a file,
then the expected value of x should be greater than the anticipated useful of the data that is
protected by the password.
(c) If the cutoff between “insecure” and “secure” were x amount of time, how long
would a secure password have to be? State and justify your assumptions regarding the
character set from which the password is selected and the amount of time required to test a
single password.
Four alphabetic uppercase characters would be a secure password.
Going to back to (a.) the three character password, requiring over a day to get the password it
seems secure. Therefore a four character would increase the time to more than a day
(Approximately, over 600 days).
2. Describe each of the following four kinds of access control mechanisms in terms of (a)
ease of determining authorized access during execution, (b) ease of adding access for a new
subject, (c) ease of deleting access by a subject, and (d) ease of creating a new object to
which all subjects by default have access.
• Per-subject access control list; (a) if a simple look is made on the list, it can be an O (1)
operation in the case that it is implemented as a hash table.
(b) Additionally to the subject’s list, there can be an effective O (1) operation.
(c) If there is removal form that subject’s list, then that can be an effective an O (1) operation.
pg. 2
questions and verified answers 2026 exam lOMoAR cPSD| 22962964
Cyber Security Questions Arizona Western College
questions and verified answers 2026 exam
1. Calculate the timing of password-guessing attacks:
(a) If passwords are three uppercase alphabetic characters long, how much time would it
take to determine a particular password, assuming that testing an individual password
requires 5 seconds? How much time if testing requires 0.001 seconds?
Given
Password = uppercase alphabetic characters
Characters = 3 (26*26*26)
Number of ways to generate characters = 263
Number of ways = 17,576
Time taken = 17,576 × 5 Seconds
Time taken = 87,880 seconds
Which is equivalent to 24.411 hrs.… a few seconds longer than a day…
If time take was 0.001 seconds then;
Time taken = 17,576 ×0.001
Time taken = 17.576 seconds.
(b) Argue for a particular amount of time as the starting point for “secure.” That is,
suppose an attacker plans to use a brute-force attack to determine a password. For what
pg. 1
, Cyber Security Questions Arizona Western College
questions and verified answers 2026 exam lOMoAR cPSD| 22962964
value of x (the total amount of time to try as many passwords as necessary) would the
attacker find this attack prohibitively long?
In the case of access passwords such as login information, the expected value of x greater that
the frequency of changing the password. For accessing data like a password for protecting a file,
then the expected value of x should be greater than the anticipated useful of the data that is
protected by the password.
(c) If the cutoff between “insecure” and “secure” were x amount of time, how long
would a secure password have to be? State and justify your assumptions regarding the
character set from which the password is selected and the amount of time required to test a
single password.
Four alphabetic uppercase characters would be a secure password.
Going to back to (a.) the three character password, requiring over a day to get the password it
seems secure. Therefore a four character would increase the time to more than a day
(Approximately, over 600 days).
2. Describe each of the following four kinds of access control mechanisms in terms of (a)
ease of determining authorized access during execution, (b) ease of adding access for a new
subject, (c) ease of deleting access by a subject, and (d) ease of creating a new object to
which all subjects by default have access.
• Per-subject access control list; (a) if a simple look is made on the list, it can be an O (1)
operation in the case that it is implemented as a hash table.
(b) Additionally to the subject’s list, there can be an effective O (1) operation.
(c) If there is removal form that subject’s list, then that can be an effective an O (1) operation.
pg. 2
