What is "rainbow table"

n. (context mathematics English) A table of surjective functions used to decrypt a text that was coded using a hash table.

A rainbow table is a precomputed table for reversing cryptographic hash functions, usually for cracking password hashes. Tables are usually used in recovering a plaintext password up to a certain length consisting of a limited set of characters. It is a practical example of a space/time trade-off, using less computer processing time and more storage than a brute-force attack which calculates a hash on every attempt, but more processing time and less storage than a simple lookup table with one entry per hash. Use of a key derivation function that employs a salt makes this attack infeasible.

Rainbow tables are an application of an earlier, simpler algorithm by Martin Hellman.