Any one up for a distributed brute force attack on single DES? My back-of-the-envelope calculations and guesstimates put this on the hairy edge of doability (the critical factor is how many machines can be recruited - a non-trivial cash prize would help).

Count me in. I've got a couple of net-connected Pentiums that are mostly idle. Did you consider the possibility of DES chips in your back-of-the-envelope calculations? They are hundreds of times faster than PCs. I don't know where to get them or how much they cost, though. I would expect they wouldn't be too expensive. The cash might be better spent on DES chips than on a prize. Might be able to bring some money in by selling "I Helped Crack DES And All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt" T-shirts. ===================================================================== | Steve Reid - SysAdmin & Pres, EDM Web (http://www.edmweb.com/) | | Email: steve@edmweb.com Home Page: http://www.edmweb.com/steve/ | | PGP (2048/9F317269) Fingerprint: 11C89D1CD67287E68C09EC52443F8830 | | -- Disclaimer: JMHO, YMMV, TANSTAAFL, IANAL. -- | ===================================================================:)