Pass the HashiCorp Security Automation Certification HCVA0-003 Questions and answers with ValidTests

Response wrapping is a feature that allows Vault to take the response it would have sentto a client and instead insert it into the cubbyhole of a single-use token, returning that token instead. The client can then unwrap the token and retrieve the original response. Response wrapping has several benefits, such as providing cover, malfeasance detection, and lifetime limitation for the secret data. One of the benefits is to ensure that only a single party can ever unwrap the token and see what’s inside, as the token can be used only once and cannot be unwrapped by anyone else, even the root user or the creator of the token. This provides a way to securely distribute secrets to the intended recipients and detect any tampering or interception along the way5.

The other options are not benefits of response wrapping:

Log every use of a secret: Response wrapping does not log every use of a secret, as the secret is not directly exposed to the client or the network. However, Vault does log the creation and deletion of the response-wrapping token, and the client can use the audit device to log the unwrapping operation6.

Load balance secret generation across a Vault cluster: Response wrapping does not load balance secret generation across a Vault cluster, as the secret is generated by the Vault server that receives the request and the response-wrapping token is bound to that server. However, Vault does support high availability and replication modes that can distribute the load and improve the performance of the cluster7.

Provide error recovery to a secret so it is not corrupted in transit: Response wrapping does not provide error recovery to a secret so it is not corrupted in transit, as the secret is encrypted and stored in the cubbyhole of the token and cannot be modified or corrupted by anyone. However, if the token is lost or expired, the secret cannot be recovered either, so the client should have a backup or retry mechanism to handle such cases.

Dynamic secrets are generated on-demand by Vault and have a limited time-to-live (TTL). They do not ensure that administrators can see every password used, as they are often encrypted and ephemeral.The benefits of dynamic secrets are:

They support systems that do not natively provide a method of expiring credentials, such as databases, cloud providers, SSH, etc. Vault can revoke the credentials when they are no longer needed or when the lease expires.

They minimize the damage of credentials leaking, as they are short-lived and can be easily rotated or revoked. If a credential is compromised, the attacker has a limited window of opportunity to use it before it becomes invalid.

They replace cumbersome password rotation tools and practices, as Vault can handle the generation and revocation of credentials automatically and securely. This reduces the operational overhead and complexity of managing secrets.

A web application that uses Vault’s transit secrets engine to encrypt data in-transit can benefit from the following security features:

Even if the attacker was able to access the raw data, they would only have encrypted bits (TLS in transit). This means that the attacker would need to obtain the encryption key from Vault in order to decrypt the data, which is protected by Vault’s authentication and authorization mechanisms. The transit secrets engine does not store the data sent to it, so the attacker cannot access the data from Vault either.

The keys can be rotated and min_decryption_version moved forward to ensure this data cannot be decrypted. This means that the web application can periodically change the encryption key used to encrypt the data, and set a minimum decryption version for the key, which prevents older versions of the key from being used to decrypt the data. This way, even if the attacker somehow obtained an old version of the key, they would not be able to decrypt the data that was encrypted with a newer version of the key.

The other statements are not true, because:

You cannot rotate the encryption key so that the attacker won’t be able to decrypt the data. Rotating the key alone does not prevent the attacker from decrypting the data, as they may still have access to the old version of the key that was used to encrypt the data. You need to also move the min_decryption_version forward to invalidate the old version of the key.

The Vault administrator would not need to seal the Vault server immediately. Sealing the Vault server would make it inaccessible to both the attacker and the legitimate users, and would require unsealing it with the unseal keys or the recovery keys. Sealing the Vault server is a last resort option in case of a severe compromise or emergency, and is not necessary in this scenario, as the attacker does not have access to the encryption key or the data in Vault. References: Transit - Secrets Engines | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, Encryption as a service: transit secrets engine | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

In the HashiCorp Vault UI, secrets are organized in a tree-like structure. To view a secret located at secret/my-secret, you would click on the “secret/” folder in the tree, then click on the “my-secret” file. In this screenshot, the “secret/” folder is located at option C. This folder contains the secrets that are stored in the key/value secrets engine, which is the default secrets engine in Vault. The key/value secrets engine allows you to store arbitrary secrets as key/value pairs. The key is the path of the secret, and the value is the data of the secret. For example, the secret located at secret/my-secret has a key of “my-secret” and a value of whatever data you stored there.

To make an authenticated request via the Vault HTTP API, you need to use the X-Vault-Token HTTP Header or the Authorization HTTP Header using the Bearer scheme. The token is a string that represents your identity and permissions in Vault. You can obtain a token by using an authentication method, such as userpass, approle, aws, etc. The token can also be a root token, which has unlimited access to Vault, or a wrapped token, which is a response-wrapping token that can be used to unwrap the actual token. The token must be sent with every request to Vault that requires authentication, except for the unauthenticated endpoints, such as sys/init, sys/seal-status, sys/unseal, etc. The token is used by Vault to verify your identity and enforce the policies that grant or deny access to various paths and operations. References: https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/api-docs 3, https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/tokens 4, https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/auth 5

The error was thrown because the policy code contains an invalid capability, “write”. The valid capabilities for a policy are “create”, “read”, “update”, “delete”, “list”, and “sudo”. The “write” capability is not recognized by Vault and should be replaced with “create”, which allows creating new secrets or overwriting existing ones. The other statements are not correct, because the wildcard (*) and the sudo capability are both valid in a policy. The wildcard matches any number of characters within a path segment, and the sudo capability allows performing certain operations that require root privileges.

Using a short-lived dynamic secrets can help limit the scope of a credential breach by reducing the exposure time of the secrets. Dynamic secrets are generated on-demand by Vault and automatically revoked when they are no longer needed. This way, the credentials are not stored in plain text or in a static database, and they can be rotated frequently to prevent unauthorized access. Dynamic secrets also provide encryption as a service, which means that they perform cryptographic operations on data in-transit without storing any data. This adds an extra layer of security and reduces the risk of data leakage or tampering. References: Dynamic secrets | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, What are dynamic secrets and why do I need them? - HashiCorp

The command shown in the image is:

vault token create -policy=approle -orphan -period=60h

This command creates a new token with the following characteristics:

It has the policy “approle” attached to it, which grants or denies access to certain paths and operations in Vault according to the policy rules. The policy can be defined by using the vault policy write command or the sys/policy API endpoint12.

It is an orphan token, which means it has no parent token and it will not be revoked when its parent token is revoked. Orphan tokens can be useful for creating long-lived tokens that are not affected by the token hierarchy3.

It has a period of 60 hours, which means it has a renewable TTL of 60 hours. This means that the token can be renewed indefinitely as long as it does not go past the 60-hour mark from the last renewal time. The token’s TTL will be reset to 60 hours upon each renewal. Periodic tokens are useful for creating tokens that have a fixed lifetime and can be easily revoked4.

The statement is false. The Vault encryption key is not stored in Vault’s backend storage, but rather in Vault’s memory. The Vault encryption key is the key that is used to encrypt and decrypt the data that is stored in Vault’s backend storage, such as secrets, tokens, policies, etc. The Vault encryption key is derived from the master key, which is generated when Vault is initialized. The master key is split into unseal keys using Shamir’s secret sharing algorithm, and the unseal keys are distributed to trusted operators. To start Vault, a quorum of unseal keys is required to reconstruct the master key and derive theencryption key. The encryption key is then kept in memory and used to protect the data in Vault’s backend storage. The encryption key is never written to disk or exposed via the API. References: Seal/Unseal | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, Key Rotation | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

Shamir’s Secret Sharing is a cryptographic algorithm that allows a secret to be split into multiple parts, called key shares, such that a certain number of key shares are required to reconstruct the secret. The number of key shares and the threshold number are configurable parameters that depend on the desired level of security and availability. Vault uses Shamir’s Secret Sharing to protect its master key, which is used to encrypt and decrypt the data encryption key that secures the Vault data. When Vault is initialized, it generates a master key and splits it into a configured number of key shares, which are then distributed to trusted operators. To unseal Vault, the threshold number of key shares must be provided to reconstruct the master key and decrypt the data encryption key. This process ensures that no single operator can access the Vault data without the cooperation of other key holders. References: https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/seal 4, https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/commands/operator/init 5, https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/commands/operator/unseal 6