During an engagement, a penetration tester found the following list of strings inside a file: Which of the following is the BEST technique to determine the known plaintext of the strings?

The correct answer is B. Rainbow table attack. A Rainbow Table attack is the best technique when you have a list of unknown strings that are likely to be cryptographic hashes (such as MD5 or SHA1 digests). A rainbow table is a precomputed lookup table that maps hash values back to their original plaintext, making it extremely

Attacks and Exploits

Question

During an engagement, a penetration tester found the following list of strings inside a file:

Which of the following is the BEST technique to determine the known plaintext of the strings?

Exhibit

Options

ADictionary attack
BRainbow table attack
CBrute-force attack
DCredential-stuffing attack

How the community answered

(21 responses)

A
5% (1)
B
90% (19)
C
5% (1)

Explanation

A Rainbow Table attack is the best technique when you have a list of unknown strings that are likely to be cryptographic hashes (such as MD5 or SHA1 digests). A rainbow table is a precomputed lookup table that maps hash values back to their original plaintext, making it extremely fast to reverse common hashes without brute-forcing. A dictionary attack (A) hashes candidate words and compares them, which is slower than a precomputed table. A brute-force attack (C) tries every possible combination - far too slow for long or complex values. Credential stuffing (D) applies known username/password pairs against live authentication systems, which is unrelated to offline hash cracking.

Topics

#Password cracking#Rainbow table#Hashing#Cryptographic attacks

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