Crucial Exams

Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Practice Question

While testing a proprietary block-cipher implementation, you flip a single bit in the 256-bit secret key and notice that roughly half of the ciphertext bits change even though the plaintext remains identical. Which cryptographic design goal does this observation illustrate, and why is that goal important for cipher security?

  • Confusion - obscuring the direct relationship between key material and ciphertext bits.

  • Perfect forward secrecy - ensuring that compromise of a long-term key does not reveal past session keys.

  • Steganography - hiding the very existence of a message rather than altering ciphertext properties.

  • Avalanche effect - small input changes cause approximately half the output bits to flip, frustrating cryptanalysis.

Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
Cryptography
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