4 ms·
(and has been) generated to cover the entire LM/NTLM space I don't think this is true. Certainly true for the LM space of 7 characters, but the size of the NT
by dsp1234 11y ago
(and has been) generated to cover the entire LM/NTLM space
I don't think this is true. Certainly true for the LM space of 7 characters, but the size of the NTML rainbow table for all passwords of length 1-9 with "only" mixed alphanumeric is 690GB with a key space of 13,759,005,997,841,642. This doesn't include the fact that a windows password can use any unicode character. So while there is could be some sort of collision with a shorter password, it's not really likely. Note that windows passwords can be up to 127 unicode characters, but that in win2k/2k3 the actual dialog box would only allow 32. So we're talking quite a bit more space to have each combination stored.
Additionally, unless I'm doing some bad math here, it's just not currently possible to have a rainbow table that includes all possible MD4 hash values. An MD4 hash is 16 bytes, which is 128 bits. In order to just list each hash would take 16 bytes * 2^128 = 5 * 10^39 bytes, which is something like 5 * 10^27 terabytes, 5 * 10^13 yottabytes, etc. This doesn't include any space to list whatever password caused that hash to be calculated.
And directly 'reversing' an MD4/NTLM hash still requires a preimage attack on MD4 and the current best known is still at a complexity of 2^121 [0], which would likely still be more feasible than having access to an MD4 rainbow table with all possible hash values.
[0] - https://who.rocq.inria.fr/Gaetan.Leurent/files/MD4_FSE08.pdf https://who.rocq.inria.fr/Gaetan.Leurent/files/MD4_FSE08.pdf