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Module Quiz

Complete this quiz after finishing all concept and practice pages. Save your answers before opening separate quiz calibration. Aim to answer without rereading the concept pages.

Current Module Questions​

Question 1: STRIDE Letter Matching (Threat Modeling)​

A webhook endpoint accepts signed payloads but does not verify the signature. An attacker replays an old payload from a legitimate sender. Which STRIDE letter best describes this threat, and what is a minimal mitigation?

Question 2: Scenario -- Which Alert Is Wrong and Why?​

On-call receives this page at 2 a.m.:

"CPU utilization exceeded 85% for 5 minutes on pod api-7f9d (replica 3 of 10). The service success rate is 99.99%."

Is this a well-designed alert? Why or why not?

Question 3: Identity as the Perimeter​

A deployment pipeline currently uses a long-lived access key stored as a CI secret. Describe the identity-centric alternative in three operational steps.

Question 4: Envelope Encryption Flow​

Explain what rotating the KEK changes and what it does not change.

Question 5: Dynamic Secrets​

A service needs a database credential. What does a dynamic secret give you that a rotated static secret does not?

Question 6: Data Classification​

Give three fields in a typical e-commerce system and classify each on the Public / Internal / Confidential / Restricted ladder, with one-sentence justification.

Question 7: Network Control Selection​

You want to ensure that traffic from your VPC to object storage never leaves your VPC. Which control do you use?

Question 8: Image Hardening​

Why does switching to a distroless base image reduce post-exploitation options specifically, rather than just the CVE count?

Question 9: Scenario -- Which Alert Is Wrong and Why?​

A team has this alert:

"One of five replicas of orders-svc is unhealthy for more than 2 minutes -- page on-call."

The service is designed to tolerate up to two replica failures with no customer impact. Is the alert well-designed?

Question 10: Cardinality Hazard​

Why is http_requests_total{user_id} almost always a bad idea?

Question 11: Sampling Strategy​

In a service where errors are 0.1% of traffic, is 1% head sampling a good idea?

Question 12: Structured Logging​

Give one query you can answer with structured JSON logs that is hard with unstructured logs.

Question 13: Scenario -- Silent Runner​

A nightly export job for orders was scheduled. Users downstream start reporting stale data. CPU, memory, and disk on the job cluster are all nominal, no pages fired overnight. What class of alert was missing, and what would it measure?

Question 14: Threat-Modeling Question​

Apply STRIDE to a signed-webhook endpoint (as in Question 1 but more broadly). Give at least one finding for each of S, I, and D, and one mitigation per finding.

Question 15: Runbook Minimum Structure​

Name the five sections a usable runbook must have, in order, and one sentence describing each.

Interleaved Review Questions​

(from earlier modules in Semester 9 and cross-cutting tracks)

Prior Module Question 1 (M01 -- Cloud Platform Fundamentals)​

Why does every cloud workload need a stable identity distinct from the network position it runs in?

Prior Module Question 2 (M02 -- IaC)​

What does declaring infrastructure in code give you that click-ops does not, specifically for security review?

Prior Module Question 3 (M03 -- Container Orchestration)​

Why do admission controllers sit naturally beside image signing and provenance?

Prior Module Question 4 (M04 -- CI/CD)​

Give two CI/CD habits that directly reduce supply-chain risk.

Prior Module Question 5 (Semester 8 M04 -- Scale, Reliability, Performance)​

How does an SLO connect to alert design in this module?

Self-Assessment and Remediation​

Mastery Level (90-100% correct):

  • Retrieval is strong; complete all module and semester evidence gates before advancing.

Proficient Level (75-89% correct):

  • Review the concept pages for the missed items. Redo the relevant katas from practice page 4.

Developing Level (60-74% correct):

  • Redo the threat-modeling lab and the observability design clinic end-to-end. Reread Concepts 1, 5, 10, 12, and 14 before retrying.

Insufficient Level (<60% correct):

  • Return to the concept sequence and rebuild the symptom-vs-cause and DEK/KEK mental models before retrying. Pair with a peer to walk through one real system as a threat model plus observability spec.

Progression boundary​

Quiz performance calibrates retrieval and reasoning. It does not replace runnable work, changed-case transfer, the module assessment or required semester evidence. Consult practice calibration for the additional independent cases.