About this interactive
What you are doing: deciding whether a rainbow table would still recover the passwords from a described storage setup.
A rainbow table is a precomputed list of passwords and their matching fingerprints for one hashing algorithm. The attacker looks a stolen fingerprint up in the table, and a match hands over the password.
Two things defeat it. A long password pushes the number of possible inputs so high that no one could precompute a table that covers them. A unique random value mixed into each password before hashing shifts every stored fingerprint away from any ready-made table, so even matching passwords look different. Short, unsalted fingerprints made with a well-known algorithm are the ones a table still cracks.
What you'll learn
- Judge, for each described password-storage setup, whether a rainbow table still works or is defeated
Aligned to
CompTIA Security+
1.4
Explain the importance of using appropriate cryptographic solutions.
2.4
Given a scenario, analyze indicators of malicious activity.
Key terms
- Rainbow Table
- A precomputed lookup table used to reverse cryptographic hash functions, allowing attackers to recover plaintext passwords from stolen hashed credentials. Rainbow table attacks are defeated by adding a unique salt to each password before hashing.
- Hash Function
- A mathematical algorithm that converts input data of any size into a fixed-size output value used to verify data integrity.
- Salting
- The practice of appending a unique random value to a password before hashing to prevent rainbow table lookups and ensure identical passwords produce different hash outputs.
Topics
Rainbow Table
Hash Function
Salting
Interactive
Streak Sort
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