:: 21-May-2007 04:34 GMT (Monday) ::
Dear friends,
It is with great sadness that we must announce that RSA Labs has
decided to terminate the RSA Secret-Key Challenge, which impacts the
RC5-72 project and all of the remaining RC5 challenges. This means
that RSA Labs will not confirm any solutions or award any additional
prizes, should a correct solution be found. Furthermore, we have
received a statement indicating that they will not be disclosing the
solutions to the unsolved challenges. More details can be found on
http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2100 (Note that the page should
state that the RC5-32/12/8 solution was recovered on 14 July 2002, not
28 January 1997.)
Although RSA Labs is halting their official sponsorship, there is
still the option open to us to continue the project without their
prize or validation. We would like to solicit your feedback regarding
this option. Discussion is welcome on our rc5 mailing list (see
http://lists.distributed.net/mailman/listinfo/rc5 if you are not
already a member). In the coming days, we will provide a facility to
allow official votes to be made.
If the choice to discontinue the RC5-72 project is made, the official
transition plan will be as follows: In one week’s time from the
announced decision, the distributed.net keyservers will begin
indicating that the RC5-72 project is closed to all connecting dnetc
clients. All results received after that time will be discarded. A
couple of days before then, we will begin slowing down RC5 work unit
generation to allow the network to drain. If we receive sufficient
feedback indicating that you would like us to continue operating the
RC5-72 project, we will continue to generate work units and the
project will remain open.
We intend to continue operating the OGRp2 project, and are currently
in the development stages of additional types of projects. More
details regarding these future projects will be announced at a later
date. In the mean time, we encourage everyone to continue
participating in both the RC5-72 and OGRp2 projects.
Moo!