Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 23:38:58 -0600 From: David McNett <nugget@slacker.com> To: rc5@lists.distributed.net Subject: [RC5] [ADMIN] The secret message is... Sender: owner-rc5@llamas.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: rc5@llamas.net Status: RO --UlVJffcvxoiEqYs2 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Once again I have the great privilege of coming to you with good news. It is with great pleasure (and a sigh of relief) that I can now inform you that the DES-II-1 challenge has been successfully met by distributed.net. The winning key to the challenge was detected and submitted to RSA Labs at 02:26 GMT on Monday, 23-Feb-1998. The correct key, 76 9E 8C D9 F2 2F 5D EA, revealed the words which we've been anticipating these past 39 days: "The secret message is: Many hands make light work." (If you ask me, this is a nice nod in our direction. Thanks, RSA Labs!) In addition to proving that 56-bit DES is no longer sufficient for protecting valuable information, we've now also proved that blind luck need not be a factor in brute-force decryption attacks. The original DES Challenge and the more recent RC5-56 wins were fortunate and did not have to sweep a significant portion of the keyspace. This time around, however, we managed to complete almost 90% of the keyspace and have now proven that even when the law of averages chooses to catch up to us and forces us to pay our dues, we are still an unstoppable force. Our collective victory is all the more impressive when you consider what we had to accomplish to achieve it. We tested sixty-three quadrillion keys. That number is simply staggering. Assuming *0* growth between now and July, we'll be able to sweep the entire DES-II-2 keyspace in just under 29 days. That's assuming that we do not recruit another person, don't add any more machines, and are even more unlucky next time. I daresay at least one of those assumptions is probably false. I'd invite all of you to join us in IRC (efnet, #distributed) for a rowdy victory party. Take a breather. Sit back and watch your clients automatically roll over to RC5-64. The only other issue at hand is *who* found the key. The person who found the winning key has politely asked to remain anonymous. Rest assured, I've been in contact with them and they know they've won. They will be receiving their full share of the prize and are quite excited about the victory. All I'd ask is that we all respect this person's wishes and not bother the list with public speculation as to their identity. I'm sure we all appreciate just how important privacy and anonymity can be. Here are some numbers to chew on while the stats are down: Project statistics: Start of contest: January 13, 1998 at 09:00 PST Start of distributed.net effort: January 13, 1998 at 09:08 PST End of Contest: February 23, 1998 at 02:26 PST Size of keyspace: 72,057,594,037,927,936 Approximate keys tested: 63,686,000,000,000,000 Number of 2^30 (average) keyblocks: 67,108,864 Number of keys in average keyblock: 1,073,741,824 Peak blocks per day: 5,540,982 Peak keys per second: 34,430,460,000 The unencrypted message: Many hands make light work Computing equivalents: Distributed.net is equivalent in processing power to: 11,264 DEC Alpha 21064 533s 15,316 Sun Ultra I 167s 22,393 Intel Pentium II 333s 68,859 Macintosh PowerPC 604e/200s. 41,712 Intel Pentium 166s 399,374 Intel 486DX2/66s 7,446,033 Intel 386SX/20s (based solely on DES client performance) Prospective: If Keys were dollars, we could pay off the U.S. National Debt in 6.25 minutes If Keys were pennies, we could buy 536249385 Mazda Miatas each day. If Keys were pennies, we could buy 256728249 Jeep Cherokees each day! If you printed a single page to represent each key block as it was checked and placed those pages in a stack, it would grow 12.83 inches taller every minute. If blocks were liters of Dr. Pepper, we could produce 6381493 six-packs each day If Key Blocks were cheeseburgers, fries, and a large Dr. Pepper, we could feed the entire city of Toronto, Ontario lunch each day. (on a personal note, It sure feels nice to be doing RC5 blocks again. I feel like I've just slipped on an old, comfortable pair of loafers that were lost in the attic for two months) -- ________________________________________________________________________ |David McNett |To ensure privacy and data integrity this message has| |nugget@slacker.com|been encrypted using dual rounds of ROT-13 encryption| |Birmingham, AL USA|Please encrypt all important correspondence with PGP!| --UlVJffcvxoiEqYs2 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNPOucPqEj3HEBeehAQEKBgQAizpn1SrmYhz/Ycx1aNUxewi9r7X8gRTr ifuwC+4qAJXWcDOesdOx1V1IzQ6eSHLFuiaDyLsNmUwIoUpwJm0CTlmwtYIDDc4R mGrO7t0FUne+l+YhFyYJTarnMjmCpySJjEf9I/GNrWfGTnFAWAaaGQp+f1ZyBTkJ 1bDtm3rzbjk= =iv/8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --UlVJffcvxoiEqYs2-- -- To unsubscribe, send 'unsubscribe rc5' to majordomo@lists.distributed.net rc5-digest subscribers replace rc5 with rc5-digest