Rainbow Table Attack

What Does Rainbow Table Attack Mean?

A rainbow table attack is a type of hacking wherein the perpetrator tries to use a rainbow hash table to crack the passwords stored in a database system. A rainbow table is a hash function used in cryptography for storing important data such as passwords in a database. Sensitive data are hashed twice (or more times) with the same or with different keys in order to avoid rainbow table attacks.

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Techopedia Explains Rainbow Table Attack

A password database usually generates a key for a rainbow table and encrypts a password before storing it. When a user enters a password for the nth time, the password is again encrypted with the same key string and then matched with the stored value. A rainbow table is a precomputed lookup table used in cryptography for storing password hashes. It is used for recovering a password based on its hash value.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…