Before launching a rainbow attack, what does the attacker need to know?

Before launching a rainbow table attack, the attacker primarily requires knowledge of an individual username. This is because rainbow tables are designed to exploit the vulnerabilities of hashed passwords associated with specific user accounts. By having the username, the attacker can focus on cracking the associated password hash using the pre-computed hash values stored in the rainbow table.

Understanding the username is crucial because it allows the attacker to identify the specific hash they need to target within the system. Once they have the hashed password linked to that username, they can use the rainbow table to quickly derive the plain text password from the hash if it exists in the table.

While knowing a user's full password or the encryption method may seem relevant, those details are not necessary to perform a rainbow table attack effectively. The same goes for the encryption key, which is not applicable in this context as rainbow tables primarily deal with hashed values, not encrypted data.