Smart Table Recovery ™ (Rainbow Tables) Method

We are finishing developing the new password recovery method, called Smart Table Recovery (TM). It is based on "Rainbow Tables", however we have improved this method a lot, signficiantly reducing the required amount of disk space (to one fourth) and improving the performance.

 

Smart Table Recovery Method (TM) can be used in a number of situations. It is particularly good for recovering Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 passwords. It is also applicable for other tasks, such as recovering a password when its hash (MD5, MD4, SHA1 or any other) is known. Smart Table Recovery is based on special precomputed recovery tables. They allow for breaking of long and complex password quite quickly.

 

At the moment, Smart Table Recovery Method (TM) is implemented in the following our products:

• Windows Password v6.0 for recovering Windows passwords;
• Express Recovery Inhouse Edition for recovering Word and Excel 97-2003 documents.
• PDF Password for quickly decrypting PDF documents protected with a 40-bit password;

 

Windows Password recovery using Rainbow Tables

 

 

It is not necessary to use this method  to recover short passwords (up to five characters) and long but simple passwords. The table below shows password recovery time estimates for Smart Table Recovery and classic Brute Force Attack. Remember, passwords longer than 7 characters are split into two parts, so 7 characters it the worst case.

 

Brute Force Attack Smart Table Recovery Short passwords (up to 5 characters) 9 minutes N/A 6 characters alphanumeric 13 minutes 5 minutes 6 characters all characters 10 hours 5 minutes 7 characters letters only 45 minutes 40 minutes 7 characters alphanumeric 8 hours 40 minutes 7 characters all characters 29 days 40 minutes

 

 

As you can see, Smart Table Recovery is especially useful for recovering complex 7 character passwords containing punctuation marks and other non-alphanumeric characters.

 

Key facts about Smart Table Recovery:

• the recovery time required depends on the number of passwords you want to recover (near to linear dependence). The more passwords you have, the longer is the recovery process.
  

• the recovery time depends on a number of factors, however you can roughly estimate it as: 40 + N/3 minutes, where N is the number of passwords you want to break.
  

• the success rate is over 99% , however there is a small probability that Smart Table Recovery fails.
  

• recovery tables take a lot of disk space, about 40 Gb