ICT 417 CYBERSECURITY PRINCIPLES
MIDTERM EXAM
Information Security Fundamentals Questions and Answers Verified
Solutions 2026/2027
1. Which pillar of the CIA Triad is compromised when an attacker executes a successful
Denial of Service (DoS) attack against an enterprise web server?
A. Confidentiality
B. Integrity
C. Availability
D. Authenticity
Rationale: Denial of Service attacks flood systems with malicious traffic or requests, rendering resources
unavailable to legitimate users.
2. What security mechanism ensures that an individual who signs a digital document
cannot later claim they did not sign it?
A. Non-repudiation
B. Confidentiality
C. High Availability
D. Least Privilege
Rationale: Non-repudiation uses asymmetric cryptography and digital signatures to provide irrefutable
proof of a message's origin and integrity.
3. In symmetric key cryptography, what primary security challenge arises as the total
number of communication endpoints increases?
A. High computational overhead during encryption
B. Scalability issues associated with secure key distribution and management
C. Inability to generate strong initialization vectors
D. Vulnerability to collision attacks in public keys
Rationale: Symmetric encryption requires N(N-1)/2 unique keys for N users, making key distribution and
storage difficult at scale.
, 4. What mathematical characteristic enables asymmetric encryption algorithms like RSA
to securely exchange secrets over untrusted networks?
A. Substitution-permutation network functions
B. Trapdoor one-way mathematical functions
C. Pseudorandom bit generation seeds
D. Linear feedback shift registers
Rationale: Trapdoor one-way functions are easy to compute in one direction but difficult to reverse without
private key trapdoor knowledge.
5. Which cryptographic hash property guarantees that it is computationally infeasible to
locate any two distinct inputs that produce identical hash outputs?
A. Pre-image resistance
B. Second pre-image resistance
C. Collision resistance
D. High entropy spreading
Rationale: Collision resistance requires that finding two arbitrary inputs x and y such that H(x) = H(y) is
computationally impossible.
6. What access control framework grants or denies access permissions based strictly on
a user's defined organizational job function?
A. Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
B. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
C. Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
D. Rule-Based Access Control
Rationale: RBAC assigns permissions to predefined roles based on organizational duties, assigning users
to appropriate roles.
7. In a Mandatory Access Control (MAC) environment enforced by the Bell-LaPadula
model, what restriction does the "Simple Security Property" enforce?
A. No Read Up (a subject cannot read data at a higher security classification level)
B. No Write Down (a subject cannot write data to a lower security classification level)
MIDTERM EXAM
Information Security Fundamentals Questions and Answers Verified
Solutions 2026/2027
1. Which pillar of the CIA Triad is compromised when an attacker executes a successful
Denial of Service (DoS) attack against an enterprise web server?
A. Confidentiality
B. Integrity
C. Availability
D. Authenticity
Rationale: Denial of Service attacks flood systems with malicious traffic or requests, rendering resources
unavailable to legitimate users.
2. What security mechanism ensures that an individual who signs a digital document
cannot later claim they did not sign it?
A. Non-repudiation
B. Confidentiality
C. High Availability
D. Least Privilege
Rationale: Non-repudiation uses asymmetric cryptography and digital signatures to provide irrefutable
proof of a message's origin and integrity.
3. In symmetric key cryptography, what primary security challenge arises as the total
number of communication endpoints increases?
A. High computational overhead during encryption
B. Scalability issues associated with secure key distribution and management
C. Inability to generate strong initialization vectors
D. Vulnerability to collision attacks in public keys
Rationale: Symmetric encryption requires N(N-1)/2 unique keys for N users, making key distribution and
storage difficult at scale.
, 4. What mathematical characteristic enables asymmetric encryption algorithms like RSA
to securely exchange secrets over untrusted networks?
A. Substitution-permutation network functions
B. Trapdoor one-way mathematical functions
C. Pseudorandom bit generation seeds
D. Linear feedback shift registers
Rationale: Trapdoor one-way functions are easy to compute in one direction but difficult to reverse without
private key trapdoor knowledge.
5. Which cryptographic hash property guarantees that it is computationally infeasible to
locate any two distinct inputs that produce identical hash outputs?
A. Pre-image resistance
B. Second pre-image resistance
C. Collision resistance
D. High entropy spreading
Rationale: Collision resistance requires that finding two arbitrary inputs x and y such that H(x) = H(y) is
computationally impossible.
6. What access control framework grants or denies access permissions based strictly on
a user's defined organizational job function?
A. Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
B. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
C. Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
D. Rule-Based Access Control
Rationale: RBAC assigns permissions to predefined roles based on organizational duties, assigning users
to appropriate roles.
7. In a Mandatory Access Control (MAC) environment enforced by the Bell-LaPadula
model, what restriction does the "Simple Security Property" enforce?
A. No Read Up (a subject cannot read data at a higher security classification level)
B. No Write Down (a subject cannot write data to a lower security classification level)
