ITPEC FE Morning October 2018 Question 37
ITPEC FE Morning October 2018 — Question 37 of 80
Rainbow Table Attack — a password attack using pre-computed hash-password pairs.
A rainbow table is a large lookup table mapping hash values to their plaintext passwords, built before the attack.
How it works:
- Attacker obtains hashed passwords (e.g., from a leaked database)
- Looks up each hash in the pre-computed table
- If found → password is instantly recovered
Why not others:
- (a) Brute force attack — tries every combination in real time, no pre-computation
- (b) Malware attack — malicious software; unrelated to hash/password cracking
- (d) Zero-day attack — exploits an unknown vulnerability; not a password attack
Key defense: salting — adding random data to passwords before hashing, making pre-computed tables useless.
AI-generated — may contain errors
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