On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 4:29 PM, Crawford, Scott <[email protected]> wrote: > Any idea how to calculate that? Even assuming we just use a-z,A-Z, and 0-9, > we have 62 characters, so is a 15 char rainbow table 62 times the size of a > 14 char one? I’d assume there’s some relationship similar to that. Even if > it’s just double size for each character you add, the tables are not going > to be storable once you start getting to the size of good passphrases.
I did some trials a few months back, and things certainly did get big quick. But "It depends" comes up a lot for this discussion. For example, if we assume the passphrase is an actual phrase, we can limit ourselves to English words and exclude a gigantic chunk of keyspace. There's also the question of how much resources one can devote to the project. One guy farting around on his own isn't going to have much of a budget. But if you can spend a few thousand dollars, you can easily build a system with tens of terrabytes of storage and oodles of compute power. Set that to crunching numbers for six months. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
