Cybersecurity professionals constantly face the challenge of protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access. One common target for attackers is user passwords stored in databases. To strengthen password security, cryptographic techniques like salting are used. But what are three type of attacks that are preventable through the use of salting? (choose three.) This blog explores that very question and explains why salting is a vital part of a secure password-handling strategy.

This comprehensive guide is created for IT professionals, security enthusiasts, and certification exam candidates preparing through StudyDumps Official, particularly for exams involving cybersecurity fundamentals. By the end of this post, you’ll understand the role of salting, how it mitigates key types of attacks, and you’ll also review sample MCQs to test your knowledge.

What is Salting?

Salting is a security technique in which a random value (salt) is added to user passwords before hashing them. This makes each hash unique, even if users have the same password. It protects against precomputed attack methods and ensures that stolen hash databases are less useful to attackers.

Why is Salting Necessary?

Without salting, identical passwords result in identical hashes. This opens the door to several attack types. Salting ensures that even if two users have the same password, their stored hashes differ due to the unique salt applied to each password.

Let’s answer the key question: What are three type of attacks that are preventable through the use of salting? (choose three.)

1. Rainbow Table Attacks

What is it?
A rainbow table is a precomputed database of hashes for every possible password. Attackers use it to match hash values from a stolen database and reverse-engineer passwords.

How salting helps:
Salting makes precomputed rainbow tables useless. Because salts make hashes unique, an attacker would need to compute a rainbow table for every possible salt-password combination, which is computationally infeasible.

2. Dictionary Attacks

What is it?
In a dictionary attack, attackers try commonly used passwords (like “123456” or “password”) by hashing them and comparing with the stolen hashes.

How salting helps:
With unique salts, even if two users have “password123,” their salted hashes will be different. This defeats standard dictionary comparisons unless the attacker knows the exact salt used for each password, which is rarely the case.

3. Precomputed Hash Attacks

What is it?
This is a general category of attacks that includes both rainbow table and dictionary attacks. Precomputed hashes are stored in large databases and matched against stolen hash lists.

How salting helps:
Salting disrupts precomputed hash attacks by creating unique, unpredictable hash values that don’t match any precomputed values unless the exact salt is known.

Bonus: Salting Helps Against Credential Stuffing

Although not directly preventable by salting alone, salting indirectly helps limit the success of credential stuffing attacks, where stolen credentials from one site are used on another. Since salted password hashes vary by implementation, attackers can’t reuse hash databases effectively across different systems.

How Salting Works: A Simple Example

1. Password: Password123
2. Generated Salt: G3f$9!zQ
3. Salted Password: Password123G3f$9!zQ
4. Hash: A unique hash of the salted string, like e97a83781f3a…

If another user chooses the same password, a different salt is generated, leading to a completely

Salting vs Hashing: What’s the Difference?

• Hashing turns data into a fixed-size string using an algorithm like SHA-256.
• Salting adds randomness to the data before hashing, ensuring uniqueness and improving security.

Salting isn’t a replacement for hashing. Instead, it strengthens hashing to prevent attacks that exploit predictability in hash values.

Salting in Real-World Applications

Modern applications and authentication systems (like Linux shadow files, database password storage, and web frameworks) implement salted hashes for user password protection. Salting is considered a best practice in the OWASP Top Ten for securing credentials.

When Salting Isn’t Enough

While salting is effective, it’s not a silver bullet. It should be used alongside:

• Strong hashing algorithms like bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2
• Key stretching techniques
• Two-factor authentication (2FA)
• Proper password policies

Salting and IT Certifications

If you’re preparing for cybersecurity certifications or IT exams like CompTIA Security+, Cisco CCNA Security, or ISC² SSCP, understanding how salting defends against specific types of attacks is a critical part of the exam syllabus.

Let’s review some sample questions to help solidify your learning.

Best Practices for Implementing Salting

1. Use a unique salt for every password
2. Generate salts using a cryptographically secure random number generator
3. Store the salt and hash together, but separately from the original password
4. Use salting with strong hashing algorithms like bcrypt or Argon2
5. Never reuse salts across systems or users

Conclusion

To recap: What are three type of attacks that are preventable through the use of salting? (choose three.) The correct answer includes rainbow table attacks, dictionary attacks, and precomputed hash attacks. Salting strengthens password security by making hash values unique and harder to reverse-engineer.

For IT professionals and certification candidates, understanding this concept is crucial for both practical security implementation and passing security exams. At StudyDumps, we provide up-to-date materials to help you prepare for cybersecurity exams with real-world relevance.

Ready to dive deeper? Visit StudyDumps and explore our latest dumps, practice tests, and expert-authored guides for top IT certifications.

Sample MCQs on Salting

Question 1
What are three type of attacks that are preventable through the use of salting? (Choose three.)
A. Rainbow table attacks
B. Social engineering
C. Dictionary attacks
D. Brute-force attacks
E. Precomputed hash attacks

Correct Answers: A, C, E

Question 2
Why does salting passwords help prevent rainbow table attacks?
A. It hides the password characters
B. It adds computational cost
C. It makes hash values unique, rendering precomputed tables useless
D. It encrypts the password directly

Correct Answer: C

Question 3
Which of the following is TRUE about password salting?
A. Salting replaces hashing in secure systems
B. Salting ensures passwords cannot be brute-forced
C. Salting is used to make each password hash unique
D. Salting is only effective if the password is strong

Correct Answer: C

Question 4
Salting is LEAST effective against which of the following?
A. Rainbow table attacks
B. Brute-force attacks
C. Precomputed hash attacks
D. Dictionary attacks

Correct Answer: B
Explanation: Brute-force attacks test all combinations, and while salting slows this down, it doesn’t prevent it entirely.

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