[agwa]

> However, any possible password with a standard printable ASCII character set will typically be found in Rainbow tables up to 10 characters long making expensive cracking unnecessary.

Really? Storing every possible 10 character long printable ASCII password plus its MD5 hash would require approximately 1.5 zettabytes[1].

[1] 95^10 * (16+10)

[morecoffee]

Rainbow tables are formed by chains of passwords and their hashes. The rainbow table only includes the ends of the chains, so you can throw away the middle of the chain.

Rainbow tables are a tradeoff between storing every hash, and generating them during cracking. You get to pick how much space you want to spend to speed up cracking.