CompTIA Security+ (SY0-501) — Question 5

Which of the following cryptographic attacks would salting of passwords render ineffective?

Answer options

• A. Brute force
• B. Dictionary
• C. Rainbow tables
• D. Birthday

Correct answer: C

Explanation

Salting passwords effectively prevents the use of rainbow tables because it adds unique data to each password before hashing, making precomputed tables useless. Brute force and dictionary attacks can still succeed against salted passwords, given enough time and resources, as they do not rely on precomputed hashes. The birthday attack is unrelated to this context, as it focuses on hash collisions rather than password cracking.