Ethical Hacker jane Doe is attempting to crack the password of the head of the it department of ABC company. She Is utilizing a rainbow table and notices upon entering a password that extra…

Question

Options

• APassword key hashing
• BPassword salting
• CPassword hashing
• DAccount lockout

• A
  7% (4)
• B
  87% (47)
• C
  4% (2)
• D
  2% (1)

Explanation

Password Salting Explanation

Option B is correct because password salting is the technique of adding random extra characters (the "salt") to a password before hashing it, which makes rainbow table attacks ineffective since the precomputed hash values in a rainbow table won't match the salted hash stored in the system.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A (Password key hashing) is not a standard security term/countermeasure and does not describe the process of adding extra characters to a password
• C (Password hashing) alone simply converts a password to a fixed-length string, but without added characters, rainbow tables can still crack common hashed passwords since the hashes are precomputed
• D (Account lockout) is a brute-force countermeasure that locks an account after failed attempts - it has no relevance to rainbow tables, which work offline against stolen password databases

Memory Tip

Think of "salting your food" - just as adding salt changes the flavor of a dish in a unique way, adding a salt value changes the hash of a password uniquely, making it unrecognizable to a rainbow table. Extra characters added = Salt!

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