What attack is used to crack passwords by using a precomputed table of hashed passwords?

A brute force attack systematically tries every possible character combination and computes each hash in real time, relying on raw computation rather than any precomputed lookup table.

A hybrid attack extends a dictionary by appending or substituting characters and computes hashes on the fly, without using a precomputed table of hash values.

A rainbow table attack relies on a precomputed data structure that stores plaintext-to-hash pairs, so an attacker who steals a password hash can look up its plaintext in the table without performing any live computation. This makes the attack far faster than brute force because the hard work is done beforehand. Password salting defeats this technique by ensuring that identical passwords produce unique hashes, invalidating any precomputed table.

A dictionary attack hashes a curated list of likely passwords at runtime and compares them to the target, rather than looking up results from a previously computed table.