This is a little out of date information. Dictionary attacks and publicly accessible Rainbow tables have existed for quite some time (late 90s probably). Salting your passwords was an important way to break rainbow tables, but doesn't prevent, only slows down, dictionary attacks. And now with GPU assisted computations salting techniques won't protect you. I almost think discussions like this should just cut to the chase and say use Bcrypt with proper iteration counts to thwart modern brute force attacks. I realize this is a 3 part series, but talking about rainbow tables is like discussing the proper way to hold your buggy whip.
Comments
This is a little out of date information. Dictionary attacks and publicly accessible Rainbow tables have existed for quite some time (late 90s probably). Salting your passwords was an important way to break rainbow tables, but doesn't prevent, only slows down, dictionary attacks. And now with GPU assisted computations salting techniques won't protect you. I almost think discussions like this should just cut to the chase and say use Bcrypt with proper iteration counts to thwart modern brute force attacks. I realize this is a 3 part series, but talking about rainbow tables is like discussing the proper way to hold your buggy whip.