Rainbow tables, generation and lookup, preferably using GPU

Question

1a) What software can I use to generate my own rainbow tables, preferably software that can utilize CUDA or ATI Stream?

One of the reasons I want to make my own, is that I want to use a specific charset/alphabet.

1b) If I want to make a rainbow table for a custom/rare hash algorithm, do I have to write my own software?

2) What software can I use to look up a hash (or list of hashes) in a generated rainbow table, preferably software that can utilize CUDA or ATI Stream?

I have assumed GPU acceleration will be helpful in both generation and lookup - tell me if I'm wrong on that.

Answer 1

Rainbowcrack is the defacto standard rainbow table generating program, but its really old. Someone recentaly wrote patches for John The Ripper to support GPUs. JTR is nice, especially now that most password hashes have a large salt.

This is a cool project that is using the same software that powers folding@home to generating rainbow tables that can be downloaded for free. Its best to hit the password with an existing rainbow table, and then hit it with JTR.

Or if you are breaking WPA/WPA2, hit it with cowpatty, and if that fails then hit it with pyrit. (WPA-PSK is complete and utter trash)