Rainbow tables are precomputed hash tables used to reverse cryptographic hash functions, enabling rapid recovery of plaintext passwords from hashed values.
Overview
Rainbow tables are precomputed hash tables used to reverse cryptographic hash functions, enabling rapid recovery of plaintext passwords from hashed values. They exploit weaknesses in legacy, unsalted hashes and are significant because they illustrate practical password-cracking capabilities and reinforce the need for salted, slow-hash algorithms and multifactor authentication in modern systems.
Related Threat Clusters
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Mandiant Releases Tools to Combat Net-NTLMv1 Protocol Vulnerabilities
Mandiant has released rainbow tables that can crack credentials using the Net-NTLMv1 protocol within 12 hours. This legacy Microsoft authentication protocol has been known to expose users to credential theft for over 20…
4 articles · Updated January 19, 2026 -
Mandiant Releases NTLMv1 Rainbow Tables for Admin Password Cracking
Mandiant has publicly released a dataset of Net-NTLMv1 rainbow tables, highlighting the vulnerabilities of the deprecated NTLMv1 authentication protocol. This release affects organizations still using NTLMv1, which has…
2 articles · Updated January 19, 2026
Recent Intelligence Reports
- Mandiant Publishes Rainbow Tables That Crack NTLMv1 Admin Passwords — Gbhackers · January 19, 2026
- Mandiant releases quick credential cracker, to hasten the death of a bad protocol — Theregister · January 18, 2026
- Mandiant Releases Rainbow Tables Enabling NTLMv1 Admin Password Hacking — Cybersecuritynews · January 18, 2026