Distributed.net

Currently, distributed.net is working on RC5-72 (breaking RC5 with a 72-bit key), and the OGR-25 project, which is searching for 25 point optimal Golomb rulers. The OGR project is expected to complete before the end of 2008, while RC5-72 has an expected completion date of over one thousand years. Both problems are part of a series— OGR is part of an infinite series; RC5 currently has eight unsolved challenges from RSA Security, although in May 2007, RSA Security announced that they would no longer be providing prize money for a correct key to any of their secret key challenges.

As of 2001, distributed.net was estimated to have a throughput of over 30 TFLOPS. Modern throughput is likely to be much higher.

History

A new independent effort, named distributed.net, was later coordinated by Jeff Lawson in March 1997 to resume the effort. A cow head was selected as the icon of the application and the project's mascot. The RC5-56 challenge was solved on October 19, 1997 after 250 days.

The next project was the RC5-64 challenge which took nearly five years to complete before the correct key (0x63DE7DC154F4D039) was found on July 14, 2002 decrypting the message to the plaintext "some things are better left unread".

Official projects

 id:yellow1    value:rgb(0.867,0.797,0.33)

 id:yellow2    value:rgb(0.816,0.714,0.031)

 id:yellow3    value:rgb(0.70,0.60,0.175)

 id:blue1      value:rgb(0.418,0.543,0.95)

 id:blue2      value:rgb(0.395,0.484,0.769)

 bar:RC5  color:yellow width:25 mark:(line,white) align:center  fontsize:S

 from:start   till:10/19/1997    text:RC5-56   color:yellow1

 from:10/29/1997  till:07/14/2002     text:RC5-64   color:yellow2

 from:12/03/2002   till:end          text:RC5-72   color:yellow3

 bar:OGRa  color:blue1 width:25 mark:(line,white) align:center  fontsize:S

 from:07/14/2000 till:11/01/2004   text:OGR-24

 bar:OGRb  color:blue2 width:25 mark:(line,white) align:center  fontsize:S

 from:08/01/2000  till:end   text:OGR-25

 bar:CSC color:orange width:25 mark:(line,white) align:center  fontsize:S

 from:11/17/1999  till:01/16/2000   text:CSC

 bar:DES color:green width:25 mark:(line,white) align:center  fontsize:S

 from:01/13/1998   till:02/24/1998  text:DES-II-1

 from:07/13/1998  till:07/17/1998   text:DES-II-2

 from:01/18/1999  till:01/19/1999  text:DES-III

• Optimal Golomb Rulers (OGR-25) — In progress
• RSA Lab's 72-bit RC5 Encryption Challenge — In progress (although RSA Labs has discontinued the challenge) Cryptography
• RSA Lab's 56-bit RC5 Encryption Challenge — Completed 19 October 1997 (after 250 days and 47% of the key space tested).
• RSA Lab's 56-bit DES II-1 Encryption Challenge — Completed 24 February 1998 (after 39 days)
• RSA Lab's 56-bit DES II-2 Encryption Challenge — Ended 17 July 1998 (found independently by EFF's Deep Crack custom DES cracker after 2.5 days)
• RSA Lab's 56-bit DES-III Encryption Challenge — Completed 19 January 1999 (after 22.5 hours with the help of EFF's Deep Crack custom DES cracker)
• CS-Cipher Challenge — Completed 16 January 2000 (after 60 days and 98% of the key space tested).
• RSA Lab's 64-bit RC5 Encryption Challenge — Completed 14 July 2002 (after 1757 days and 83% of the key space tested). Other
• Optimal Golomb Rulers (OGR-24) — Completed 13 October 2004

See also

• RSA Secret-Key Challenge
• DES Challenges
• Brute force attack
• Cryptanalysis
• Key size
• Seventeen or Bust
• List of distributed computing projects

References

External links

• Official website
• The RSA Laboratories Secret-Key Challenge (now closed)