What are rainbow tables and how are they used? Gives a very precise answer about what rainbow tables are and how they are used. I had always confused hash-tables and rainbow tables. My question is regarding the size of the rainbow tables. Now, for a hash table, the size of the file would be :
let n = ( size of the input plain text file )
(Assuming one line per plain-text)
so size(hash table) = n + (bytes in hash)*h + n ( for separation) Bytes
On the other hand, is there a similar mechanism to estimate the size of a rainbow table ? I am sure there is, since tools used to generate a rainbow table usually have a size estimate on them.
How is the size of a rainbow table estimated, given:
charset, chain length, min and max length of plain text.
This would give a better understanding of how and why rainbow tables are better.