Jeff Atwood has a great layman's introduction to rainbow tables and why this stuff deserves thought here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/09/rainbow-hash-

Jeff Atwood has a great layman's introduction to rainbow tables and why this stuff deserves thought here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/09/rainbow-hash-cracking.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/09/rainbow-hash-cracki... The follow up by Thomas Ptacek, a security expert, goes into a lot more detail about what to use and how: http://chargen.matasano.com/chargen/2007/9/7/enough-with-the-rainbow-tables-what-you-need-to-know-about-s.html http://chargen.matasano.com/chargen/2007/9/7/enough-with-the... Both are very readable articles, which I find helps immensely.