Rainbow Table Attack

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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. Some of the most highly-rated cryptos use cryptographic technology in order for their users to have transparency and safety.

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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
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.