Mandiant releases rainbow table that cracks weak admin password in 12 hours

Security firm Mandiant has released a database that allows any administrative password protected by Microsoft’s NTLM.v1 hash algorithm to be hacked in an attempt to nudge users who continue using the deprecated function despite known weaknesses.

The database comes in the form of a rainbow table, which is a precomputed table of hash values linked to their corresponding plaintext. These generic tables, which work against multiple hashing schemes, allow hackers to take over accounts by quickly...