DESCHALL Press Release (fwd)

[Jeff Simmons]

> 
> 
> >         INTERNET-LINKED COMPUTERS CHALLENGE DATA ENCRYPTION STANDARD
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > At the time the winning key was reported to RSADSI, the DESCHALL effort
> > had searched almost 25% of the total.  At its peak over the recent
> > weekend, the DESCHALL effort was testing 7 billion keys per second. 
> 
> A quick question.  Was finding the key by searching less than a quarter
> of the keyspace just luck?  Or did the DESCHALL folks exclude keyspace
> already searched by competing efforts?
 
There were three main groups looking for the RSADSI key:  DESCHALL,
SOLNet (European based), and a private attack at SGI.  To my knowledge
none of them excluded keyspace the others had searched.

You might call it luck, but at the time the key was found, the combined
keyspace searched by the three groups was a bit over 50%, even counting
in the expected number of duplicate keys searched.

-- 
Jeff Simmons				"Hey guys, I don't hear any noise,
jsimmons at goblin.punk.net		 Are you sure you're doing it right?"