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Question 321.

A development team is designing a service that processes sensitive financial transactions. Which control MOST directly supports transaction accountability?

1. Use shared service accounts for all operators
2. Record security-relevant actions with unique authenticated identities and protected audit logs
3. Disable transaction logging to reduce storage
4. Allow anonymous administrative access from internal systems

Correct Answer: 2. Record security-relevant actions with unique authenticated identities and protected audit logs

Explanation:

Accountability requires reliable evidence linking sensitive actions to specific authenticated identities. Unique accounts, strong authentication, protected audit records, and reliable timestamps help establish who performed each transaction or administrative operation. Shared accounts weaken accountability because multiple people appear as the same identity. Audit records should also be protected against unauthorized modification or deletion and should avoid storing unnecessary sensitive data.

Question 322.

A software component performs a security check on a file and then opens the file by name several milliseconds later. Which vulnerability should be considered MOST carefully?

1. SQL injection
2. Time-of-check to time-of-use race condition
3. Cross-site scripting
4. Password spraying

Correct Answer: 2. Time-of-check to time-of-use race condition

Explanation:

A time-of-check to time-of-use vulnerability can occur when a resource changes between validation and use. An attacker may replace or modify the file after the security check but before the application opens it. Safer designs use atomic operations, secure handles, locking, or operating-system mechanisms that eliminate or minimize the race window. Security-sensitive workflows should avoid relying on assumptions that can change between separate operations.

Question 323.

A web application must display untrusted data inside JavaScript code. Which security control is MOST important?

1. Longer session identifiers
2. Database encryption
3. Context-appropriate output encoding for the JavaScript context
4. Increasing server capacity

Correct Answer: 3. Context-appropriate output encoding for the JavaScript context

Explanation:

Output encoding must match the specific context in which untrusted data is inserted. Data placed inside JavaScript requires different handling from HTML text or attributes. Incorrect encoding can allow attacker-controlled input to become executable script. Whenever possible, applications should avoid directly inserting untrusted data into executable contexts and use safe framework APIs that separate data from code.

Question 324.

A software pipeline detects that the cryptographic signature on a build artifact is invalid. What should happen?

1. Deploy the artifact if automated tests passed
2. Replace the signature with a new one without investigation
3. Allow the developer to decide informally
4. Reject the artifact and investigate the integrity failure**

Correct Answer: 4. Reject the artifact and investigate the integrity failure

Explanation:

An invalid artifact signature means authenticity or integrity cannot be established. The artifact should not be promoted or deployed because it may have been modified or may not originate from the approved build process. The failure should be logged and investigated to determine whether there is corruption, signing misconfiguration, or malicious tampering. Release pipelines should fail securely when integrity checks do not succeed.

Question 325.

Which design principle MOST directly supports keeping a security mechanism simple enough to understand and verify?

1. Economy of mechanism
2. Maximum privilege
3. Fail open
4. Shared administration

Correct Answer: 1. Economy of mechanism

Explanation:

Economy of mechanism encourages security designs to remain as simple as practical. Excessive complexity can create hidden dependencies, implementation mistakes, inconsistent behavior, and difficult-to-test edge cases. Simpler security mechanisms are easier to review and verify, provided they still meet all required security objectives. Unnecessary complexity should not be mistaken for stronger protection.

Question 326.

A development team wants to protect sensitive application secrets from accidental exposure through environment variables and logs. Which approach is BEST?

1. Print secrets during application startup for troubleshooting
2. Use an approved secrets-management mechanism and minimize secret exposure to processes and diagnostics
3. Store secrets in command-line arguments
4. Put secrets in application source code

Correct Answer: 2. Use an approved secrets-management mechanism and minimize secret exposure to processes and diagnostics

Explanation:

Secrets should be distributed through controlled mechanisms that support access control, rotation, auditing, and minimal exposure. Environment variables can sometimes be appropriate, but they may leak through debugging tools, process inspection, crash reports, or logs depending on the platform. Applications should avoid printing secrets and should retrieve only the credentials they require using a narrowly scoped identity.

Question 327.

A security review finds that a mobile application trusts a local Boolean value called isAdmin to authorize privileged actions. What is the MAIN weakness?

1. Weak encryption
2. Poor availability
3. Authorization depends on attacker-controlled client state
4. Excessive logging

Correct Answer: 3. Authorization depends on attacker-controlled client state

Explanation:

Client-side application state can often be modified by users who control their own device. A Boolean value stored locally should not determine whether the server performs a privileged operation. The server must verify authorization using trusted identity and policy information. Client-side values may control presentation, but they should never serve as the authoritative security decision point for sensitive functions.

Question 328.

A secure build system downloads dependencies directly from public repositories during every production build. What is the BEST improvement?

1. Allow any newly published package automatically
2. Disable dependency version tracking
3. Trust packages based only on popularity
4. Use controlled repositories with verified versions, integrity checks, and provenance controls**

Correct Answer: 4. Use controlled repositories with verified versions, integrity checks, and provenance controls

Explanation:

Directly resolving dependencies from uncontrolled public sources at build time introduces supply-chain risk and can cause unreviewed versions to enter production. Controlled repositories, version locking, integrity verification, and provenance information provide stronger assurance about what is being built. Dependencies should also be scanned continuously for newly disclosed vulnerabilities and support status.

Question 329.

What is the PRIMARY value of linking security test cases to individual security requirements?

1. It provides traceability and evidence that each requirement has been verified
2. It eliminates the need for requirements review
3. It guarantees that every vulnerability will be discovered
4. It replaces threat modeling

Correct Answer: 1. It provides traceability and evidence that each requirement has been verified

Explanation:

Traceability allows teams to determine whether each documented security requirement has a corresponding implementation and verification activity. If a requirement changes, linked tests can be reviewed and updated. This supports assurance, audits, maintenance, and change impact analysis. Testing alone does not prove the software contains no vulnerabilities, but traceability provides strong evidence that known requirements were addressed.

Question 330.

A software service uses TLS but does not validate the server certificate of an external API. What is the MAIN risk?

1. The connection will always be slower
2. An attacker may impersonate the external API through a man-in-the-middle attack
3. The application cannot perform authorization
4. Database records may become corrupted automatically

Correct Answer: 2. An attacker may impersonate the external API through a man-in-the-middle attack

Explanation:

Encryption without endpoint authentication does not establish that the application is communicating with the intended server. Proper certificate validation should verify the trust chain, expected hostname or service identity, validity period, and applicable policy requirements. Disabling certificate checks can allow an attacker to present another certificate and intercept otherwise encrypted communication.

Question 331.

A team wants to prevent resource exhaustion when clients upload compressed archives. Which control is MOST appropriate?

1. Accept archives of unlimited compressed and expanded size
2. Run extraction with administrator privileges
3. Apply size, extraction-depth, resource, and processing limits
4. Trust archives from authenticated users automatically

Correct Answer: 3. Apply size, extraction-depth, resource, and processing limits

Explanation:

Compressed archives can expand far beyond their uploaded size or contain deeply nested structures that consume excessive CPU, memory, or disk space. Applications should establish limits on compressed size, expanded size, nesting depth, file count, processing time, and resource usage. Extraction should also validate file paths and occur with minimal privileges to address archive traversal and parser risks.

Question 332.

A software product relies on a critical security library that has reached end of support. What should the organization do?

1. Keep using it indefinitely because it still functions
2. Remove it from dependency inventory
3. Disable vulnerability monitoring
4. Assess exposure and migrate to a maintained supported alternative**

Correct Answer: 4. Assess exposure and migrate to a maintained supported alternative

Explanation:

End-of-support software may no longer receive fixes for newly discovered vulnerabilities. The organization should evaluate current exposure, determine whether temporary mitigations are needed, and migrate to a maintained alternative according to risk. Support status should be tracked proactively so critical dependencies do not become unexpected lifecycle liabilities. Functional software can still represent significant security risk if it is no longer maintained.

Question 333.

Which practice BEST supports secure handling of privileged configuration changes?

1. Require authenticated authorization, change control, and protected audit logging
2. Allow anonymous changes from internal networks
3. Store administrator credentials in configuration files
4. Disable configuration history

Correct Answer: 1. Require authenticated authorization, change control, and protected audit logging

Explanation:

Security-sensitive configuration can alter authentication, permissions, encryption, logging, or network exposure. Changes should therefore be limited to specifically authorized identities and recorded in a protected audit trail. High-risk modifications may also require peer review or approval. Configuration should be governed similarly to source code because unauthorized changes can weaken security without modifying application binaries.

Question 334.

A software team wants to verify that messages exchanged between two systems remain confidential and have not been altered. Which approach is MOST appropriate?

1. Data compression only
2. Authenticated encryption using an approved cryptographic mechanism
3. Plaintext transport with longer message identifiers
4. Base64 encoding

Correct Answer: 2. Authenticated encryption using an approved cryptographic mechanism

Explanation:

Authenticated encryption can provide confidentiality and integrity together when implemented correctly. It protects message contents from unauthorized disclosure while allowing recipients to detect tampering. Key management, nonce requirements, algorithm selection, and replay protection must still be handled according to the approved cryptographic design. Encoding mechanisms such as Base64 provide no meaningful confidentiality or integrity.

Question 335.

A development team wants to determine whether security requirements still apply after migrating an application to a new cloud architecture. What should it do?

1. Assume the old requirements remain sufficient without review
2. Remove the original threat model
3. Reassess security requirements, data flows, trust boundaries, and threats
4. Perform only performance testing

Correct Answer: 3. Reassess security requirements, data flows, trust boundaries, and threats

Explanation:

Architecture changes can introduce new services, identities, data flows, trust assumptions, and external dependencies. Existing requirements may remain valid, but their implementation or adequacy may change. Reassessing threat models and security requirements helps identify new controls or tests that are needed. Traceability makes it easier to understand which security mechanisms are affected by the migration.

Question 336.

A production system detects repeated failures when validating signatures on incoming requests. What is the BEST response?

1. Disable signature validation temporarily
2. Accept requests from known IP addresses
3. Ignore failures until users complain
4. Reject invalid requests and monitor or investigate the repeated failures**

Correct Answer: 4. Reject invalid requests and monitor or investigate the repeated failures

Explanation:

Invalid signatures indicate that request authenticity or integrity cannot be established. Such requests should be rejected rather than processed. Repeated failures may indicate misconfiguration, expired keys, integration problems, or active attack attempts. Monitoring, alerting, and investigation can help distinguish operational failures from malicious activity. Signature validation should not be disabled simply to preserve availability.

Question 337.

Which activity BEST helps determine whether production access remains appropriate after employees change roles?

1. Periodic access reviews tied to current business responsibilities
2. Performance benchmarking
3. Penetration testing only
4. Database compression

Correct Answer: 1. Periodic access reviews tied to current business responsibilities

Explanation:

Users frequently accumulate permissions as they move between roles or projects. Periodic access reviews compare current privileges with actual business responsibilities and identify excessive or obsolete access. This supports least privilege and separation of duties. Administrative, production, and sensitive-data access should generally receive especially careful review because inappropriate privileges can create significant business risk.

Question 338.

A software team is deciding whether to create its own password-hashing algorithm. What is the BEST guidance?

1. Create a proprietary algorithm because attackers will not know it
2. Use an established adaptive password-hashing algorithm through a trusted implementation
3. Store passwords with reversible encryption instead
4. Use a fast general-purpose hash without salts

Correct Answer: 2. Use an established adaptive password-hashing algorithm through a trusted implementation

Explanation:

Password storage should rely on well-studied adaptive password-hashing algorithms designed to resist offline guessing. These functions support work factors and salts that make large-scale attacks more expensive. Custom algorithms are difficult to evaluate and may contain subtle weaknesses. General-purpose fast hashes are usually unsuitable because attackers can test guesses very quickly after obtaining password hashes.

Question 339.

A vulnerability is fixed in source code, but no test is added to verify the original exploit path. What is the MAIN concern?

1. The source code will become larger
2. Build time will always increase
3. The same vulnerability may be reintroduced without being detected
4. The application cannot be deployed

Correct Answer: 3. The same vulnerability may be reintroduced without being detected

Explanation:

A regression test that reproduces the original weakness helps ensure that the fix remains effective after future changes. Without such a test, a refactor or new feature may accidentally restore the unsafe behavior. Security regression tests are especially valuable for recurring authorization, validation, session, and business-logic vulnerabilities. They help convert discovered defects into lasting improvements in the development process.

Question 340.

Which practice BEST demonstrates mature secure software lifecycle governance?

1. Perform security only during final acceptance testing
2. Let every team define security independently without oversight
3. Focus only on vulnerabilities that have already been exploited
4. Establish defined security roles, policies, risk processes, lifecycle controls, metrics, and continuous improvement**

Correct Answer: 4. Establish defined security roles, policies, risk processes, lifecycle controls, metrics, and continuous improvement

Explanation:

Mature software security governance provides consistent expectations and accountability across the entire lifecycle. Policies establish requirements, roles define ownership, risk processes guide decisions, lifecycle controls integrate security into development and operations, and metrics provide evidence about effectiveness. Findings, incidents, and recurring defect patterns should then feed continuous improvement so the program evolves with technology, threats, and business needs.