Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Just the 1-10 character lowercase alphanumeric rainbow table from freerainbowtables.com is 297 GB. Of course, you can generate rainbow tables with various parameters and tradeoffs so it's not trivial to compare them.

Still, I don't think I've ever had a rainbow table that contained plaintexts longer than 12 characters. Are 30+ length tables common these days?



EDIT: “nearly any email rainbow table”, i.e. 1-10 characters cross joined with all domains for a given tld.

You’re correct that brute force with an entropy of 3 per bit would still be too big for rainbow table usage (like 10^15 PB too big).


Using MD5 means that CPU/GPU is cheaper/easier than a rainbow table. Or you can use both. Generate 33.1B hashes/s and start with a rainbow table.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: