VAULT-ASSOCIATE Online Practice Questions and Answers

Correct Answer: B

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 the encryption 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

Correct Answer: A

An authentication method should be selected for a use case based on the auth method that best establishes the identity of the client. The identity of the client is the basis for assigning a set of policies and permissions to the client in Vault. Different auth methods have different ways of verifying the identity of the client, such as using passwords, tokens, certificates, cloud credentials, etc. Depending on the use case, some auth methods may be more suitable or convenient than others. For example, for human users, the userpass or ldap auth methods may be easy to use, while for machines or applications, the approle or aws auth methods may be more secure and scalable. The choice of the auth method should also consider the trade-offs between security, performance, and usability. References: Auth Methods | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, Authentication - Concepts | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

Correct Answer: CE

Vault policies are written in HCL or JSON format and are attached to tokens or roles by name. Policies define the permissions and restrictions for accessing and performing operations on certain paths and secrets in Vault. Policies are deny by

default, which means that an empty policy grants no permission in the system, and any request that is not explicitly allowed by a policy is implicitly denied1. Some of the features and benefits of Vault policies are:

Policies are path-based, which means that they match the request path to a set of rules that specify the allowed or denied capabilities, such as create, read, update, delete, list, sudo, etc2.

Policies are additive, which means that if a token or a role has multiple policies attached, the effective policy is the union of all the individual policies. The most permissive capability is granted if there is a conflict3. Policies can use glob

patterns, such as * and +, to match multiple paths or segments with a single rule. For example, path "secret/*" matches any path starting with secret/, and path "secret/+/config" matches any path with two segments after secret/ and ending

with config4.

Policies can use templating to interpolate certain values into the rules, such as identity information, time, randomness, etc. For example, path "secret/{{identity.entity.id}}/*" matches any path starting with secret/ followed by the entity ID of the

requester5.

Policies can be managed by using the vault policy commands or the sys/policy API endpoints. You can write, read, list, and delete policies by using these interfaces6. The default policy is a built-in policy that is attached to all tokens by default

and cannot be deleted. However, the default policy can be modified by using the vault policy write command or the sys/policy API endpoint. The default policy provides common permissions for tokens, such as renewing themselves, looking

up their own information, creating and managing response-wrapping tokens, etc7.

You do not have to use YAML to define policies, as Vault supports both HCL and JSON formats. HCL is a human-friendly configuration language that is also JSON compatible, which means that JSON can be used as a valid input for policies

as well8. Vault does not need to be restarted in order for a policy change to take effect, as policies are stored and evaluated in memory. Any change to a policy is immediately reflected in the system, and any token or role that has that policy

attached will be affected by the change.

References

1(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/policies),

2(https://developer.hashi corp.com/vault/docs/concepts/policies),

3(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/conc epts/policies),

4(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/policies),

5(https://de veloper.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/policies),

6(https://developer.hashicorp.com/va ult/docs/commands/lease),

7(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/policies) ,

8(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/policies),

9(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/policies#policy-updates)

Correct Answer: B

Running the second command in the GUI CLI will fail. The second command is vault kv put secret/creds passcode=my-long-passcode. This command attempts to write a secret named creds with the value passcode=my-long-passcode to the secret path, which is the default path for the kv secrets engine. However, the kv secrets engine is not enabled at the secret path, as shown by the first command vault secrets list, which lists the enabled secrets engines and their paths. The only enabled secrets engine is the transit secrets engine at the transit path. Therefore, the second command will fail with an error message saying that no secrets engine is mounted at the path secret/. To make the second command succeed, the kv secrets engine must be enabled at the secret path or another path, using the vault secrets enable command. For example, vault secrets enable - path=secret kv would enable the kv secrets engine at the secret path. References: kv Command | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, vault secrets enable - Command | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

Correct Answer: C

This policy allows a user to read data about the secret endpoint identity. The policy grants the user the ability to create, update, read, and delete data in the "secret/data/{identity.entity.id}" path. Additionally, the user is allowed to list data in the

"secret/metadata/{identity.entity.id}" path. This policy is useful for users who need to access information about the secret endpoint identity.

The secret endpoint identity is a feature of the Identity Secrets Engine, which allows Vault to generate identity tokens that can be used to access other Vault secrets engines or namespaces. The identity tokens are based on the entity and

group information of the user or machine that authenticates with Vault. The entity is a unique identifier for the user or machine, and the group is a collection of entities that share some common attributes. The identity tokens can carry

metadata and policies that are associated with the entity and group.

The "secret/data/{identity.entity.id}" path is where the user can store and retrieve data that is related to the secret endpoint identity. For example, the user can store some configuration or preferences for the secret endpoint identity in this path.

The "secret/metadata/{identity.entity.id}" path is where the user can list the metadata of the data stored in the "secret/data/{identity.entity.id}" path. For example, the user can list the version, creation time, deletion time, and destroy time of the

data in this path.

References:

[Identity - Secrets Engines | Vault | HashiCorp Developer] [KV - Secrets Engines | Vault | HashiCorp Developer]

Correct Answer: BC

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.

References: [1]1,

[2]2, 3(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/secrets/kv), 4(https://developer.hashicor p.com/vault/docs/secrets/kv)

Correct Answer: D

The Vault Agent stores its cache in memory, which means that it does not persist the cached tokens and secrets to disk or any other storage backend. This makes the cache more secure and performant, as it avoids exposing the sensitive data to potential attackers or unauthorized access. However, this also means that the cache is volatile and will be lost if the agent process is terminated or restarted. To mitigate this, the agent can optionally use a persistent cache file to restore the tokens and leases from a previous agent process. The persistent cache file is encrypted using a key derived from the agent's auto-auth token and a nonce, and it is stored in a user-specified location on disk. References: Caching Vault Agent | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, Vault Agent Persistent Caching | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

Correct Answer: D

The transit secrets engine is not a good solution for binaries of this size, because it is designed to handle cryptographic functions on data in-transit, not data at-rest. The transit secrets engine does not store any data sent to it, so it would require sending the entire 2GB blob to Vault for encryption or decryption, which would be inefficient and impractical. A better solution would be to use the transit secrets engine to generate a data key, which is a high-entropy key that can be used to encrypt or decrypt data locally. The data key can be returned in plaintext or wrapped by another key, depending on the use case. This way, the transit secrets engine only handles the encryption or decryption of the data key, not the data itself, and the data can be stored in any primary data store. References: Transit - Secrets Engines | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, Encryption as a service: transit secrets engine | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

Correct Answer: B

Not all storage backends support high availability mode for Vault. Only the storage backends that support locking can enable Vault to run in a multi-server mode where one server is active and the others are standby. Some examples of storage backends that support high availability mode are Consul, Integrated Storage, and ZooKeeper. Some examples of storage backends that do not support high availability mode are Filesystem, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. References: https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/ha1, https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/configuration/storage2

Correct Answer: B

Batch tokens are a type of tokens that are not persisted in Vault's storage backend, but are encrypted blobs that carry enough information to perform Vault actions. Batch tokens are extremely lightweight and scalable, and can improve the throughput for token generation. Batch tokens are suitable for high-volume and ephemeral workloads, such as containers or serverless functions, that require short-lived and non-renewable tokens. Batch tokens can be created by using the type=batch flag in the vault token create command, or by configuring the token_type parameter in the auth method's role or mount options. Batch tokens have some limitations compared to service tokens, such as the lack of renewal, revocation, listing, accessor, and cubbyhole features. Therefore, batch tokens should be used with caution and only when the trade-offs are acceptable. References: https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/tutorials/tokens/batch-tokens1, https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/commands/token/create2, https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/tokens#token-types3

Correct Answer: B

AppRole is a machine-oriented authentication method that allows machines or applications to authenticate with Vault using a role ID and a secret ID. The role ID is aunique identifier for the application, and the secret ID is a single-use credential that can be delivered to the application securely. AppRole is designed to provide secure introduction of machines and applications to Vault, and to support the principle of least privilege by allowing fine-grained access control policies to be attached to each role1. Okta, GitHub, and Transit are not machine-oriented authentication methods. Okta and GitHub are user-oriented authentication methods that allow users to authenticate with Vault using their Okta or GitHub credentials23. Transit is not an authentication method at all, but a secrets engine that provides encryption as a service4. References: AppRole Auth Method | Vault | HashiCorp Developer Okta Auth Method | Vault | HashiCorp Developer GitHub Auth Method | Vault | HashiCorp Developer Transit Secrets Engine | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

Correct Answer: AC

The policy shown in the image is:

path "secret/data/webapp1" { capabilities = ["create", "read", "update", "delete", "list"] } path "secret/data/super-secret" { capabilities = ["deny"] } This policy grants or denies access to the key/value v2 secrets engine mounted at secret/

according to the following rules:

The path "secret/data/webapp1" has the capabilities of "create", "read", "update", "delete", and "list". This means that the policy allows performing any of these operations on the secrets stored under this path. The data/ prefix is used to

access the actual secret data in the key/value v2 secrets engine5. Therefore, the policy permits the operation of vault kv get secret/webapp1, which reads the secret data at secret/data/webapp16.

The path "secret/data/super-secret" has the capability of "deny". This means that the policy denies performing any operation on the secrets stored under this path. The policy overrides any other policy that might grant access to this path.

Therefore, the policy does not permit the operations of vault kv delete secret/super-secret and vault kv list secret/super-secret, which delete and list the secret data at secret/data/super-secret respectively6. The policy does not explicitly define

any rules for the path "secret/metadata". The metadata/ prefix is used to access the metadata of the secrets in the key/value v2 secrets engine, such as the number of versions, the deletion status, the creation time, etc5. By default, if the

policy grants any of the capabilities of "create", "read", "update", or "delete" on the data/ path, it also grants the same capabilities on the corresponding metadata/ path7. Therefore, the policy permits the operation of vault kv metadata get

secret/webapp1, which reads the metadata of the secret at secret/metadata/webapp18.

References: 5(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/secrets/kv/kv-v2), [6]6, 7(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/secrets/kv/kv-v2), [8]8

Correct Answer: AE

The vault lease operations that use a lease_id as an argument are renew and revoke. The renew operation allows a client to extend the validity of a lease associated with a secret or a token. The revoke operation allows a client to terminate a lease immediately and invalidate the secret or the token. Both operations require a lease_id as an argument to identify the lease to be renewed or revoked. The lease_id can be obtained from the response of reading a secret or creating a token, or from the vault lease list command. The other operations, revoke-prefix, create, and describe, do not use a lease_id as an argument. The revoke-prefix operation allows a client to revoke all secrets or tokens generated under a given prefix. The create operation allows a client to create a new lease for a secret. The describe operation allows a client to view information about a lease, such as its TTL, policies, and metadata. References: Lease, Renew, and Revoke | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, vault lease - Command | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

Correct Answer: CD

The replication methods available in Vault Enterprise are performance replication and disaster recovery replication. These methods allow critical data to be replicated across clusters to support horizontally scaling and disaster recovery workloads. Performance replication enables a primary cluster to replicate data to one or more secondary clusters, which can handle client requests and improve performance and availability. Performance replication replicates most Vault data, such as secrets, policies, auth methods, and leases, but not tokens. Performance secondaries generate their own tokens and leases, which are not replicated back to the primary. Performance replication also supports filtering, which allows selective replication of data based on namespaces or paths. Disaster recovery replication enables a primary cluster to replicate data to one or more secondary clusters, which act as standby clusters in case of a failure or outage of the primary. Disaster recovery replication replicates all Vault data, including tokens and leases, and maintains the same configuration and state as the primary. Disaster recovery secondaries do not handle client requests, but they can be promoted to a primary in a disaster recovery scenario. References: Replication - Vault Enterprise | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, Performance Replication - Vault Enterprise | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, Disaster Recovery Replication - Vault Enterprise | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

Correct Answer: D

This screenshot is shown when you are enabling authentication methods in the GUI. Authentication methods are the ways users and applications authenticate with Vault. Vault supports many different authentication methods, including

username and password, GitHub, and more. You can enable one or more authentication methods from the grid of options, which are divided into three categories: Generic, Cloud, and Infra. Each option has a name, a description, and a logo.

You can also enable authentication methods using the Vault CLI or API.

Enabling policies, authentication engines, and secret engines are different tasks that are not related to this screenshot. Policies are rules that govern the access to Vault resources, such as secrets, authentication methods, and audit devices.

Authentication engines are components of Vault that perform authentication and assign policies to authenticated entities. Secret engines are components of Vault that store, generate, or encrypt data. These tasks have different GUI pages

and options than the screenshot.

References:

[Authentication | Vault | HashiCorp Developer]

[Policies | Vault | HashiCorp Developer]

[Authentication | Vault | HashiCorp Developer]

[Secrets Engines | Vault | HashiCorp Developer]