A rainbow table is a pre-computed lookup table used for reversing cryptographic hash functions, primarily for cracking password hashes. The attacker generates hashes for a large number of potential passwords and stores them in a specialized table. When an attacker intercepts a hash, they look it up in this table to find the corresponding plaintext password. This method perfectly matches the scenario of comparing an intercepted hash to "pre-computed hashes." It represents a time-memory trade-off, where significant pre-computation time and storage are exchanged for faster cracking.

A. Password sniffing: This is a method of intercepting data, such as passwords or hashes, from network traffic, not the technique used to crack the hash itself.

B. Brute force attack: This method computes hashes for every possible password combination in real-time during the attack, rather than using a pre-computed table.

D. Dictionary attack: This method computes hashes for a specific list of common words or passwords during the attack, not by looking them up in a pre-computed table.

1. Oechslin

P. (2003). Making a Faster Cryptanalytic Time-Memory Trade-Off. In D. Boneh (Ed.)

Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO 2003 (Vol. 2729

pp. 617-630). Springer. Section 1

"Introduction

" describes the principle of pre-calculating hash chains to create a time-memory trade-off for reversing hash functions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45146-436

2. Perrig

A.

& Song

D. (2014). CS 161: Computer Security

Lecture 8: Authentication. University of California

Berkeley. The lecture slides differentiate password cracking methods

explicitly defining rainbow tables as: "Precompute a giant table of hash(password) -> password."

3. Boneh

D. (2022). CS 255: Introduction to Cryptography

Lecture 10: Hash functions. Stanford University. The course notes discuss password hashing and attacks

describing pre-computation attacks (rainbow tables) as a method where an adversary pre-computes a large table of (m

H(m)) pairs.