Rainbow tables reduce the difficulty in brute force cracking a single password by creating a large pre-generated data set of hashes from nearly every possible password. Rainbow Tables are popular with a particularly weak password algorithm known as Microsoft LM hash. LM stands for LAN Manager, this password algorithm was used in earlier days of Windows and still lives on only for compatibility reasons.
Click Here to download this article
About Chris Gates
Chris Gates, CISSP is an American living and working in Belgium doing IT work. He has obtained his MCP 2003, CompTIA A+, Network+ & Security+ and C|EH certifications. His computer security interests are in Windows Security and Cisco Router Security. He is also a student mentor and course developer for www.learnsecurityonline.com. Feel free to email comments and suggestions on the tutorial to chris [at] learnsecurityonline [dot] com.