(fwd) DES challenge organisation

[Adam Back]

An announcement forwarded to me (due to being on des-challenge mailing
list I think) of proposed organisation for breaking RSADSI's DES
challenge.

Those interested in participating might wish to join the lists
mentioned.

In addition the list: des-challenge at muffin.org is for discussion of
the DES challenge, and can be subscribed to by sending email to
majordomo at muffin.org.

-Adam

======================================================================
Subject: Announcement: Organisation Committee
From: ths at rz.tu-ilmenau.de (Thomas S.)
Date: 15 Feb 1997 18:27:40 +0000

Hi!

The six volunteers who answered the call for a committee of
management have got together to try to help 'steer' the DES challenge.
We have considered the available options of proceeding, and we kindly
ask everyone interested in this project to follow our proposals, to
avoid waste of efforts.

1. The attempt to break the key will be coordinated. We chose this
   mainly because we can make a political statement. We don't want it
   to be a race for money.
   
   Each task will be handled by logically separate servers, some of
   which with be replicated and run as a hierachy. The protocol will
   use UDP, although there will be gateway servers for other protocols
   (such as HTTP, SMTP, FAX, etc). We hope that one of the first
   requests for a key range will be from parties interested in using a
   "random" approach -- we would appreciate some discussion on how
   large their ranges should be.

2. There will be one consistent WWW structure for the project. It does
   not have to managed by a single person. This structure should
   provide statistics, information for developers, interested users
   and perhaps even for the press. Several mirrors and translations
   will be started soon. The starting point is:
	http://www.des.crypto.org/ [fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk/des/]
   The url in brackets has to be used till we get the final subdomain.
   Likewise for the rest of this document.

3. The work of the different groups should be stated and coordinated
   on the page http://www.des.crypto.org/people.html.
   [fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk/des/people.html] This is to avoid uncoordinated
   parallel developmemt. Please write to Thomas S. 
   <webmaster at mail.des.crypto.org> [webmaster at fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk] 
   if you what want to be mentioned on this page. 

3a. Several mailing lists have been set up for the different groups: 

des-coding	for the actual DES routine and optimisation
des-networking	for the network code and protocol
des-www		for www contributions and mirrors
des-pr		for press contact, translations etc (like challenge-pr)
des-misc	:-)
des-announce	moderated, important information for users of the client

List address: <list>@lists.des.crypto.org [@xtn.net] 
To subscribe, send mail to majordomo at lists.des.crypto.org [@xtn.net] 
with in the body of the message (several actions allowed): 
   subscribe <list> 
Achives available (see homepage).

4. The actual DES routine has to be written and optimised. We ask
   developers to participate and coordinate their efforts using the
   mailing list des-coding. For obvious reasons, developers outside
   the USA are prefered, but "publication" of algorithms seems to be
   a legal way go get around. Please do not use this list to 
   distribute crypto code.

5. The prize money will be split equally between Gutenberg and EFF.
   There is a possibility of using part of it for stickers or
   something similar, but don't count on it.

We hope to get a working system up and running ASAP. The fact alone
that DES is seriously challenged (with a reasonable time frame) should
give us quite some publicity (by the time the system is ready). If we
can make use of that, we will have significantly more client than for
the 48 bit key.

The organisation committee:

Piete Brooks <Piete.Brooks at cl.cam.ac.uk>
Jered Floyd <jered at mit.edu>
Tim Newsome <drz at froody.bloke.com>
Germano Caronni <caronni at tik.ee.ethz.ch>
Thomas Roessler <Thomas.Roessler at sobolev.rhein.de>
Thomas S. <ths at fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk>