:: 26-Sep-2002 14:16 GMT (Thursday) ::
Anyone in or near Austin, TX might want to consider crashing our informal
rc5 celebration and nuclear taco festival this evening. Email for details.
Moo
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.
2002-09-26
nugget [26-Sep-2002 @ 14:16]
2002-09-25
decibel [25-Sep-2002 @ 03:36]
:: 25-Sep-2002 03:36 GMT (Wednesday) ::
The RC5 run bombed last night, so I’m re-running it. Expect stats to be off for
a bit.
distributed.net completes rc5-64 project (list announcement)
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/
2002-09-19
nugget [19-Sep-2002 @ 17:18]
:: 19-Sep-2002 17:18 GMT (Thursday) ::
http://www.slashnet.org/
The fine folks over at SlashNET will be hosting us unsavory distributed.net
geeks for an online forum on 28-Sep-2002 to discuss distributed.net, future
directions, and whatever else anyone is interested in knowing. Please
consider showing up for the fun!
2002-08-21
decibel [21-Aug-2002 @ 18:30]
:: 21-Aug-2002 18:30 GMT (Wednesday) ::
Blower’s memory upgrade is here, so expect some downtime while we install it.
}:8)
2002-08-19
decibel [19-Aug-2002 @ 15:07]
:: 19-Aug-2002 15:07 GMT (Monday) ::
More fun stats bugs…. I’m going to re-run the stats for Aug 18. Expect
some downtime while I’m tinkering about. Sorry for the inconvenience.
And by the way, when it does come time to announce that we’ve found the
key, it won’t be done by breaking stats, so stop sending email everytime
stats is broken asking if that’s why. :)
2002-08-17
decibel [17-Aug-2002 @ 13:48]
:: 17-Aug-2002 13:48 GMT (Saturday) ::
The audit script for rc5 is running right now. When it’s done (in about a
half-hour), I can turn stats-runs back on. You should notice that the wonky rc5
data for early April has been fixed.
Enjoy!
2002-08-16
decibel [16-Aug-2002 @ 15:27]
:: 16-Aug-2002 15:27 GMT (Friday) ::
I’m working on stats right now, so expect some oddities. I’m also going to turn
off the stats processing routine, so expect a delay in tonight’s stats.
2002-08-11
bovine [11-Aug-2002 @ 22:51]
:: 11-Aug-2002 22:51 GMT (Sunday) ::
Just thought I’d share some interesting statistics and graphs that I
dug up for RC5-64 right now.
The following graph shows the overall “return rates” that we have
obtained for subspaces 90 through 135, for their most recent recycled
distribution passes.
http://www1.distributed.net/~bovine/elapsed-return-rate-20020811.png
This represents work that was sent out between Jun/26/2002 through
today (we are currently on 135 right now). The horizontal axis
represents elapsed time between when a workunit is sent out and when
the result is received back, and each data point represents a
different subspace.
Although the data is a little noisy (the trend should ideally be
strictly increasing), the trends are still quite observable. As you
can see, a majority of our participants seems to return blocks back
after about 4 days, with relatively negligible results anytime
afterwards. Additionally, every time we send a workunit out on a new
recycle pass, only about 75% of those are ever actually returned (most
likely because people fetch more blocks than they intended and delete
the excess).
Here is another potentially interesting graph that shows the current
completion percentages for all 256 subspaces.
http://www1.distributed.net/~bovine/subspace-complete-20020811.png
As a reminder, the overall percent complete across the entire keyspace
is about 85%; this is the same number that is shown on the statsbox at
http://stats.distributed.net/projects.php?project_id=5
2002-08-06
bovine [06-Aug-2002 @ 08:49]
:: 06-Aug-2002 08:49 GMT (Tuesday) ::
I’ve made available some new pre-release clients (v2.8019.473) for the
following platforms:
* amigaos-ppc-pup
* amigaos-ppc-wos
* dos-x86
* linux-x86-elf
* netbsd-mipsel
* openbsd-sparc-aout
* openbsd-x86-aout
* ps2linux-mips
* win16-x86
* win32-x86-setup
* win32-x86
You can find download links for these new clients under
http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.html
There are a few important changes made in this new version:
* fix: static: rebuilt all static clients to fix CA-2002-19:
“Buffer Overflow in Multiple DNS Resolver Libraries”
* chg: all: increased buff-in.* limit to 2000 packets
* imp: x86: improved P4 RC5 core (ak-p7) (#2542)
* new: x86: detect latest Pentium III (#2778) and Athlon XP (#2783)
* chg: linux: enable /proc/apm support for non-x86 (#2643)
* fix: all: processed RC5 random blocks even if RC5 was disabled
* fix: amigaos: fixed problems with font requester opening in
GUI prefs window when clicking other gadgets
* imp: amigaos: can be shutdown by pressing escape key in GUI