how does a time-memory trade off attack work?
Time trade off, or in your case, time-memory tradeoff, works by having massive "rainbow tables" that show you ALL hashes in a hashing algorithm (probably MD5, or other low security algorithm). A "Rainbow Table" saves you time and processor power, rather than having a hash cracker eat up your ROM, but are probably many gigabytes large. The trade-off then becomes size vs. time &amp; power. If this doesn't satisfy you, or this seems like it's missing something, there is PLENTY of research being done on hash cracking, and even a youtube channel called "Computerphile" that has a better explanation on this than me.