Distributed key cracking efforts have been discussed in detail on cypherpunks and coderpunks for quite some time. A Swedish group trying to solve RSADSI's DES challenge chose to ignore the results. Here is what they got (from RISKS 19.14):

Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 17:56:54 +0200 (MET DST) From: Thomas Koenig <ig25@mvmap66.ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de> Subject: DES challenge news

You may remember RISKS-19.09, in which I discussed the risks in a network-wide attack on the RSA DES challenge: The Swedish group at http://www.des.sollentuna.se/ didn't give out its source, so the client could, in fact, do anything, such as crack a master EC-card key. The reason given was client integrity. Well, a month after this, the promised source code release has not happened. Instead, it appears that somebody disassembled part of the client, made a version that reported fake "done" blocks, and then sent these to the servers. Moral? Don't ever think that nobody can read compiled code. Don't try to run a cooperative effort like this in a closed development model. Thomas Koenig, Thomas.Koenig@ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet. ------------------------------