[ams6110]

A real rainbow represents all colors: the full spectrum. A rainbow table has all possible passwords within its spectrum (8 characters, alphanumeric, or however it's defined).

A non-technical term I might use is to call a rainbow table a "reverse phone book for passwords"

[sverige]

Fair enough, but many (probably most) of the people this training is aimed at have no idea what a reverse phone book is. I haven't seen a physical copy of one for a couple of decades.

Do you have a source for the origin of the name, or is it just what comes to your mind when you think of it?

[tCfD]

Iirc they acquired that nickname because early rainbow tables, which were in plain text or another simple uncompressed format, looked very much like ASCII rainbow patterns in a text editor due to the iterative nature of the key, salt, and hash stepping.

[ams6110]

I don't have a source, but the analogy seems obvious to me. If you're more curious, I guess you could do your own research?

[sverige]

I have, actually. I can't find a reliable source for the origin of the name, even in the original papers written to describe them.

[fjsolwmv]

There's no need to comment if you aren't sharing any information or ideas.

[fjsolwmv]

The people in the training haven't used "magic" recently either, seeing as magic doesn't exist.