Well, that's why you should use something like bcrypt and not a fast hashing algorithm. When you intentionally use a slow algorithm, it's much harder and slower

Well, that's why you should use something like bcrypt and not a fast hashing algorithm. When you intentionally use a slow algorithm, it's much harder and slower to generate these tables. With no salt or a common salt, you can generate the hashes for every common password once. If you have a long salt for each password, you have to generate the hashes for every common password for every password, which would take years longer to do. If your goal is to hack one individual account, the salt won't help. But to hack accounts in general, it will help. I'm not an expert, but that's my understanding of it. Anyone please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.