staff blogs

distributed.net staff keep (relatively) up-to-date logs of their activities in .plan files. These were traditionally available via finger, but we've put them on the web for easier consumption.

2008-05-11

thejet [11-May-2008 @ 18:15]

Filed under: project status,stats — thejet @ 18:15 +00:00

:: 11-May-2008 18:15 GMT (Sunday) ::

As you have probably noticed, we now have more detailed completion
statistics available for the OGR-25 project. By clicking on the
‘%-complete’ number on the main project status page, one can reach
a detailed ‘stubspace completion’ page. This new page outlines
the completion rates for each stubspace, as well as the overall
project stub completion information. You can reach the new page
directly at:

http://stats.distributed.net/project/ogr_status.php

In addition, for those statistics junkies out there, we have historical
information available as well at the following URL:

http://stats.distributed.net/project/ogr_status_history.php

The status history screen will display a usage message if appropriate
arguments are not supplied, which I have duplicated here for those
interested:

Usage:
project_id == The project to do stubspace reporting on
stubspace_id == [optional] The specific stubspace to report on
start_date == [optional, default: 30 days ago,
format example: 01-Apr-2008]
The date to start pulling data
end_date == [optional, default: today, format example: 01-Apr-2008]
The last date to pull data for
output_format == The output format you’d prefer [xml, csv]

Usage Example:
ogr_status_history.php?project_id=25&output_format=xml

It should be noted that the OGR completion percentages do update a
couple hours later than the rest of the statistics information
[usually around 01:30 UTC].

If anyone would like to see changes/enhancements to any of these
screens, please don’t hesitate to open a bug in bugzilla and copy me
[thejet@distributed.net] in the CC field. We’ll take a look and see if
we can integrate your suggestions, or better yet, submit a patch! :)
Bugzilla can be found here:

http://bugs.distributed.net/

Thanks for your participation and happy crunching!!! MOOO!!!

2008-02-03

mikereed [03-Feb-2008 @ 21:54]

Filed under: project status — Mike Reed @ 21:54 +00:00

:: 03-Feb-2008 21:54 GMT (Sunday) ::

Dear friends,

We are coming towards the final stages of the OGR-25 project.
Our network has come under some strain in recent days, due to
the amount of OGR work being processed. We are aware that
some of the stubs being issued are very small. This is making
calculating buffer requirements difficult for those of us who
like to keep a close eye on things.

In the default configuration, an instance of dnetc which
cannot receive OGR stubs to work on will switch over
seamlessly to the RC5-72 project. We recommend to leave this
behaviour in place, if only to ease the load on our network
at this busy time.

If you have disabled the RC5-72 project in your client
configuration, your client may sit idle for a time while we
continue to experience difficulties with network connections.

We expect that the network connection difficulties will
continue into Monday, as this is historically the busiest
day of the week for our system. Please bear with us as we
work to resolve the shortages. We thank you for your
support.

Moo!

2007-11-26

nerf [26-Nov-2007 @ 18:46]

Filed under: project status,stats — nerf @ 18:46 +00:00

:: 26-Nov-2007 18:46 GMT (Monday) ::

At our recent code-a-thon in Austin we made some significant headway on a
couple of stats projects. One is more behind the scenes and probably not as
interesting to the public (logdb), while the other is something we’re hoping is
going to be quite useful for a number of you.

In short, we have made a few changes to the way stats system works to enable it
to read either our internal log files or (drumroll) logs from a personal proxy.

We should warn you that this code path is relatively untested, but that’s what
we’re hoping you will help us with. We’re also sadly behind on documentation,
but we’re working on that, too.

We would, as always, be glad to hear about bugs suggestions or improvements
(even better when they come with a diff!). http://bugs.distributed.net/ is the
best place to report these issues. If you have questions, you can either submit
them as a bug or join us on #distributed via IRC on irc.distributed.net.

Link for the tarball:
http://http.distributed.net/pub/dcti/source/dnet-stats-1.0.1.tar.gz
Link for the sig for the tarball:
http://http.distributed.net/pub/dcti/source/dnet-stats-1.0.1.tar.gz.asc

-Nerf

2007-07-26

snikkel [26-Jul-2007 @ 17:24]

Filed under: clients,project status — snikkel @ 17:24 +00:00

:: 26-Jul-2007 17:24 GMT (Thursday) ::

Dear friends,

We would like to announce that we have recently completed OGRp2-25.2 (ie:
OGR-25 phase 2 sub-phase 2) and are very close to completing OGRp2-25.3. For a
full technical summary of the current progress and phases of OGR, please see
http://faq.distributed.net/?file=230

As we move forward, we have just begun distributing stubs from OGRp2-25.6.
These stubs are the first of the 5-diff stubs and as a result are quite a bit
bigger than stubs we have been working on in the recent past.

We are currently working on OGRp2-25 sub-phases 3, 4, 5 and 6 at this
time. Due to the arrangement of the stubs within the sub-phases,
there are fewer but larger stubs left for the later sub-phases. Our
current estimated percentage complete for all of the OGRp2-25 work is
~64.65%, as of July 26, 2007. You can see the current percentage at
http://stats.distributed.net/projects.php?project_id=25.

We have just released new clients (v2.9004.499) which feature a 1-3%
increase in the speed of the OGR MMX core. You can find the clients at
http://www.distributed.net/download/clients.php

Moo!

2007-05-21

bovine [21-May-2007 @ 04:34]

Filed under: project status — bovine @ 04:34 +00:00

:: 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!

2007-04-25

bovine [25-Apr-2007 @ 06:42]

Filed under: project status — bovine @ 06:42 +00:00

:: 25-Apr-2007 06:42 GMT (Wednesday) ::

Dear friends,

We would like to announce that we have just recently completed
OGRp2-25.1 (ie: OGR-25 phase 2 sub-phase 1). For a full technical
summary of the current progress and phases of OGR, please see
http://faq.distributed.net/?file=230

We are continuing to make progress on OGRp2-25 (sub-phases 2, 3, 4,
and 5) at this time. Due to the arrangement of the stubs within the
sub-phases, there is less work (fewer total stubs) left for the later
sub-phases. Our current estimated percentage complete for all of the
OGRp2-25 work is ~51.13%, as of 2007-04-25. You can see the current
percentage at http://stats.distributed.net/projects.php?project_id=25

Of course RC5-72 is also actively running, so you can choose to
participate in one or both of our projects.

It is also exciting to be able to announce that this month marks the
10-year anniversary of the start of distributed.net! We thank everyone
that has participated in our projects to date and look forward to
continued success.

Moo!

2005-06-30

bovine [30-Jun-2005 @ 06:41]

Filed under: clients,project status — bovine @ 06:41 +00:00

:: 30-Jun-2005 06:41 GMT (Thursday) ::

New clients have been released and can be downloaded from
http://www.distributed.net/download/ Users running any previous x86
client versions are encouraged to update.

Included with client version 2.9010.495 and higher are some exciting
speed improvements. Three new RC5-72 cores have been added, including
a new 64-bit core for AMD64 and two existing x86 RC5-72 cores have
been sped up. In addition a new OGR core has been added that provides
an approximate 30% improvement. We are eternally grateful for our
contributors’ ingenuity.

OGR25-P2 is progressing well. We have now checked over 47.66% of all
work in the first of nine sub-phases. Overall we have completed 7.66%
of OGR25-P2. For more information about the sub-phases look here:
http://faq.distributed.net/cache/230.html Note that due to an
oversight the last time we updated OGR completion on stats, it has
been showing the percent completion of the first sub-phase. We will be
going back to displaying overall completion, since this is what most
users are interested in.

A few minor issues with the clients have been corrected as well. The
‘dg3’, ‘sgp3’, and ‘snjl’ cores present in versions prior to
2.9010.495 miscalculate a small number of predictable keys in every
block, rendering some blocks containing those keys discarded for
stats. These cores were used as the default choice for 32-bit clients
running on Cyrix Cx486, AMD K5, Via C3 Nehemiah, Pentium 4, Pentium M
and 64-bit clients running on the AMD64/Intel EM64T processors.

Note that at most only 2% of the calculated keys within each block
processed by those cores are affected. This won’t affect the normal
running of the project in any way as we’ll re-process these keys if
needed.

All current x86 clients need to be upgraded to prevent the amount of
work that would need to be recalculated from growing. This also means
that all RC5-72 work from x86 clients v2.9001.474 up to v2.9009.494
(all clients released to date) will stopped being credited at a future
date.

In the past few months, a growing minority of participants have chosen
to try to cheat their way to higher stats rankings by making binary
alterations to our clients. Fortunately, great progress has been made
on both removing the largest users of these hacked clients and
implementing automatic filtering techniques to block future tainted
work.

Cheaters are removed from stats manually after intensive study of
their flushing patterns, to prevent users that tested such clients and
accidentally submitted a few blocks from being removed. Due to the
amount of manual work involved with this, a few smaller accounts may
still face removal in the near future.

We thank you for all of your contributions and hope that you will
stick with us into the future as we continue to make history. :)

2004-11-01

gregh [01-Nov-2004 @ 23:48]

Filed under: project status — gregh @ 23:48 +00:00

:: 01-Nov-2004 23:48 GMT (Monday) ::

With the completion of OGR-24, I thought I would draw a diagram of the
best ruler and talk a little bit about what it means.

The diagram can be found here: http://hewgill.com/ogr/ogr24.png

The top portion shows the ruler laid out to scale. The numbers (9, 24,
4, etc) are the distances between each mark. For various lengths
between 1 and 425 units, there is a unique way to measure that distance
using the ruler. The bottom section of the diagram shows how to use the
ruler to measure each possible distance.

For example, the distances 1, 2, 3, and 4 are trivially measured by
lining up with the corresponding distances in the ruler. 5 must be
measured by combining the 4 and the 1 (which are right next to one
another). 6 through 11 are easy because those distances are already
marked on the ruler, 12 must be measured by combining 10 and 2 (the
numbers are a little hard to read around that area, but you can compare
with the final published ruler).

The part that makes this a Golomb ruler is that there is exactly ONE
way to measure each distance. You can’t find any other combination of
distances in the given ruler that add up to say, a distance of 100,
except for 39+14+3+44. And the optimal part is that this is the
SHORTEST ruler (with respect to the overall length of 425) that offers
only one way to measure each distance. There exist longer rulers that
also have a unique way to measure each distance, and there are also
shorter rulers that end up having more than one way to measure some
distances. This ruler satisfies both properties.

Note that not every distance between 1 and 425 can be measured with
this ruler. It happens that 128 is the first distance that can’t be
measured with the given ruler. In all, only 276 of the distances
between 1 and 425 can be measured. The gaps in the lower portion of the
diagram indicate distances that can’t be measured.

Congratulations to all the participants who donated CPU time to prove
this result!

2002-09-25

distributed.net completes rc5-64 project (list announcement)

Filed under: project status — Tags: pressroom — bovine @ 00:00 +00:00

RC5-64 HAS BEEN SOLVED!

On 14-Jul-2002, a relatively characterless PIII-450 in Tokyo returned the winning key to the distributed.net keyservers. The key 0x63DE7DC154F4D039 produces the plaintext output:

The unknown message is: some things are better left unread

Unfortunately, due to breakage in scripts (dbaker’s fault, naturally) on the keymaster, this successful submission was not automatically detected. It sat undiscovered until 12-Aug-2002. The key was immediately submitted to RSA Labs and was verified as the winning key.

So, after 1,757 days and 58,747,597,657 work units tested the winning key was found! While it’s debatable that the duration of this project does much to devalue the security of a 64-bit RC5 key by much, we can say with confidence that RC5-64 is not an appropriate algorithm to use for data that will still be sensitive in more than several years’ time. On the distributed computing front, however, the RC5-64 project clearly demonstrates the viability of long-term, volunteer-driven, internet-based collaborative efforts. The next time someone bemoans the public’s short attention span or need for instant gratification you should remind them what 331,252 people were able to accomplish by joining together and working for nearly five years. distributed.net’s RC5-64 project clearly shows that even the most ambitious projects can be completed by volunteers thanks to the combined power of the internet and distributed computing.

Ignoring artificially high numbers resulting from network difficulties, we completed 86,950,894 workunits on our best day. This is 0.12% of the total keyspace meaning that at our peak rate we could expect to exhaust the keyspace in 790 days. Our peak rate of 270,147,024 kkeys/sec is equivalent to 32,504 800MHz Apple PowerBook G4 laptops or 45,998 2GHz AMD Athlon XP machines or (to use some rc5-56 numbers) nearly a half million Pentium Pro 200s.

Over the course of the RC5-64 project, 331,252 individuals participated. We tested 15,769,938,165,961,326,592 keys.

We apologize for the latency in the announcement, but scheduling conflicts with RSA Laboratories and difficulties in reaching the winning participant (who has asked to remain anonymous) introduced the additional delay to the process.

Also, please consider joining us on SlashNET IRC on Saturday 28-Sep-2002 @ 21:00 UTC (5:00PM EDT) for an online Q+A session on the RC5-64 project and the future plans for the distributed.net network. Not only are we looking forward to moving on to RC5-72 but we’re currently reshaping the framework of the dnetc architecture to better accommodate additional projects. We’re hoping to attract some new and motivated partners with good ideas and a need for cycles.

Thanks to RSA Labs for continuing to offer challenges that reward distributed efforts!

For more information, contact:
* David McNett <nugget@distributed.net> +1-512-350-5038

References

http://www.slashnet.org/
http://www.rsasecurity.com/news/releases/pr.asp?doc_id=1400
http://www.distributed.net/rc5/

1997-10-22

Official List Announcement: RC5-56 completion

Filed under: project status — Tags: pressroom — bovine @ 00:00 +00:00

It is a great privilege and we are excited to announce that at 13:25 GMT on 19-Oct-1997, we found the correct solution for RSA Labs’ RC5-32/12/7 56-bit secret-key challenge. Confirmed by RSA Labs, the key 0x532B744CC20999 presented us with the plaintext message for which we have been searching these past 250 days.

The unknown message is: It’s time to move to a longer key length

In undeniably the largest distributed-computing effort ever, the Bovine RC5 Cooperative (http://www.distributed.net/), under the leadership of distributed.net, managed to evaluate 47% of the keyspace, or 34 quadrillion keys, before finding the winning key. At the close of this contest our 4000 active teams were processing over 7 billion keys each second at an aggregate computing power equivalent to more than 26 thousand Pentium 200’s or over 11 thousand PowerPC 604e/200’s. Over the course of the project , we received block submissions from over 500 thousand unique IP addresses.

The winning key was found by Peter Stuer with an Intel Pentium Pro 200 running Windows NT Workstation, working for the STARLab Bovine Team coordinated by Jo Hermans and centered in the Computer Science Departm ent (DINF) of the Vrije Universiteit (VUB) in Brussels, Belgium. (http://dinf.vub.ac.be/bovine.html/). Jo’s only comments were that “$1000 will buy a lot of beer” and that he wished that the solution had been found by a Macintosh, the platform that repr esented the largest portion of his team’s cracking power. Congratulations Peter and Jo!

Of the US$10000 prize from RSA Labs, they will receive US$1000 and plan to host an unforgettable party in celebration of our collective victory. If you’re anywhere near Brussels, you might want to find out when the party will be held. US$8000, of course, is being donated to Project Gutenberg (http://www.promo.net/pg/) to assist them in their continuing efforts in converting literature into electronic format for the public use. The remaining US$1000 is being retained by distributed.net to assist in fund ing future projects.

Equally important are the thanks, accolades, and congratulations due to all who participated and contributed to the Bovine RC5-56 Effort! The thousands of teams and tens of thousands of individuals who have diligently tested key after key are the reason we are so successful.

The thrill of finding the key more than compensates for the sleep, food, and free time that we’ve sacrificed!

Special thanks go to all the coders and developers, especially Tim Charron, who has graciously given his time and expertise since the earliest days of the Bovine effort. Thanks to all the coordinators and keyserver operators: Chris Chiapusio, Paul Chvost ek, Peter Denitto, Peter Doubt, Mishari Muqbil, Steve Sether, and Chris Yarnell. Thanks to Andrew Meggs, Roderick Mann, and Kevyn Shortell for showing us the true power of the Macintosh and the strength of its users. We’d also like to thank Dave Avery for attempting to bridge the gap between Bovine and the other RC5 efforts.

Once again, a heartfelt clap on the back goes out to all of us who have run the client. Celebrations are in order. I’d like to invite any and all to join us on the EFNet IRC network channel #rc5 for celebrations as we regroup and set our sights on the next task. Now that we’ve proven the limitations of a 56-bit key length, let’s go one further and demonstrate the power of distributed computing! We are, all of us, the future of computing. Join the excitement as the world is forced to take notice of the power we’ve harnessed.

Moo and a good hearty laugh.

Adam L. Beberg – Client design and overall visionary
Jeff Lawson – keymaster/server network design and morale booster
David McNett – stats development and general busybody