RainbowCrack is a computer program which generates

rainbow table A rainbow table is an efficient way to store data that has been computed in advance to facilitate cracking passwords. To protect stored passwords from compromise in case of a data breach, organizations avoid storing them directly, instead transfo ...

s to be used in

password cracking In cryptanalysis and computer security, password cracking is the process of recovering passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system in scrambled form. A common approach (brute-force attack) is to repeatedly try ...

. RainbowCrack differs from "conventional" brute force crackers in that it uses large pre-computed tables called

s to reduce the length of time needed to crack a password drastically. RainbowCrack was developed by Zhu Shuanglei, and implements an improved time–memory tradeoff

cryptanalysis Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic sec ...

attack which originated in Philippe Oechslin's

Ophcrack Ophcrack is a free open-source (GPL licensed) program that cracks Windows log-in passwords by using LM hashes through rainbow tables. The program includes the ability to import the hashes from a variety of formats, including dumping directly f ...

. Some organizations have made RainbowCrack's rainbow tables available free over the internet.

References

External links

Project RainbowCrack
- Developer's official site.
Rainbow Tables & Rainbow Crack tutorial

Recovering Windows passwords with RainbowCrack
Password cracking software {{compu-prog-stub

See also

References

External links