GCFA · Question #186
Which of the following password cracking attacks is based on a pre-calculated hash table to retrieve plain text passwords?
The correct answer is B. Rainbow attack. A rainbow attack uses pre-computed hash lookup tables, known as rainbow tables, to efficiently reverse password hashes back to their plaintext equivalents.
Question
Which of the following password cracking attacks is based on a pre-calculated hash table to retrieve plain text passwords?
Options
- ADictionary attack
- BRainbow attack
- CBrute Force attack
- DHybrid attack
How the community answered
(50 responses)- A16% (8)
- B70% (35)
- C10% (5)
- D4% (2)
Why each option
A rainbow attack uses pre-computed hash lookup tables, known as rainbow tables, to efficiently reverse password hashes back to their plaintext equivalents.
A dictionary attack tries words and phrases from a predefined wordlist against the target hash at runtime, without using any pre-calculated hash table.
A rainbow attack relies on rainbow tables, which are pre-calculated data structures that map hash values back to their original plaintext passwords. By looking up a captured hash in the rainbow table, an attacker retrieves the corresponding plaintext almost instantly without recomputing hashes on the fly. This makes rainbow attacks far faster than brute force for cracking large sets of unsalted password hashes.
A brute force attack exhaustively tries every possible character combination in real time and makes no use of pre-computed data structures.
A hybrid attack combines dictionary and brute force methods by appending or prepending characters to dictionary words, but does not rely on pre-calculated hash tables.
Concept tested: Rainbow table-based password cracking attack technique
Source: https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Password_Storage_Cheat_Sheet.html
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