Distributed.net CSC Success

dbaker let us know that distributed.net has finished another one, half an hour ago as I write this. IIRC, they had to redo part of the keyspace, right? Looks like it didn't slow the project down too much.

Comments

Re:any good?

[kramer]

They've also released newer versions of the client which do some more checking on older data.

Um, no they haven't released newer versions. According to press releases they were going to release the new version (2.0) sometime last week, but it never showed up and nobody on the project ever said anything about it. The fundemental lack of respect or responses (which this is only one example of) from the team running seti@home is the reason I don't donate my time to it anymore.

realloc();

[cdlu]

Perhaps its time to reallocate our valuable and abundant CPU resources to things like SETI@Home or perhaps a project to distribute the calculation of pi to see if we can find a repeating pattern. Either way, distributed is an obsolete and top-heavy project that has served its purpose. Maybe its time to put our hacking minds together and come up with something altogether new to think of. Perhaps theoretical artificial intelligence.

Lets reallocate all this power to productive uses.
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1); }return(0);}

Re:realloc();

[Signail11]

>A distributed calculation of pi would be cool,
>but are there any algorithms to find digits of
>pi without having calculated the previous
>digits? If not, it can't be distributed.
Yes, such algorithms exist. The Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe algorithm can compute an arbitrary digit of pi in almost linear time.

http://members.wri.com/victor/articles/pi/pi.html provides more information than one could possibly want on this topic.

Re:I misread the title, but it gave me an idea any

[Capt Dan]

I think the other posters to this comment are misunderstanding the author's point.

The issue at hand is not that CSS is "simple" to break. The issue is, should a CSS case be brought up in court by the Big Bad Lawyers, what would happen?

It is understood be the technical community that CSS encryption is pretty much useless as a copy protection scheme. But how can this be proven to a jury? Expecially when $500-$1000 per hour lawyers are employed by the adversary?

distributed.net is a known and proven source for ranking the status of encryption. They are not a malicous orgainization, but rather a testbed, placing an encryption technology under intense scrutiny and forcing it to prove it's worth. Where CSS (or its relacement) placed under such scrutiny, the results may be enough to have future lawsuits thrown out of court. (and therefore lessening the slashdot posts/comments on this subject... no offense, but it is getting kind of old. There is very little new information on the subject left)


"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2

Maybe it's a flakey idea but...

[.havoc]

Expanding on the distributed.net idea, would it be practicle to create a more general client for distributed computing?

Here's what I mean:
The client would be written to actually accept algorithms via the internet and then accept the data to be crunched.
Why?:
Lots of people working on lots of computers and lots of power intense applications (I'm thinking along the lines of academic research, but this could be applied within corporations, too).

Premis: Those CPUs, some big some small, are not all busy all the time. With this client out there, those spare cycles could be used by others within the CPU-sharing-organization.

Example: All the computers in the Math department. Or, on a larger scale, several universities could coop thier super computers.

Sorry, I've just been drinking too much coffee, too late in the day...

I misread the title, but it gave me an idea anyway

[Denor]

I thought it was talking about distributed.net cracking CSS code, instead of CSC.

For the on-topic part:
I think it's good that distributed.net's accomplished another goal. Just showing people what the community is capable of is an end unto itself. An earlier poster commented that they believed it was a waste of CPU cycles, but the whole idea behind such an effort, if I'm remembering correctly, was that those CPU cycles would have been unused anyway. Might as well show off with them :)

For my idea, which the on-topic stuff spawned:
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know about the legality of this. What if distributed.net were to host a challenge where people could use their cycles to crack the other keys on CSS, for DVD-playing? Granted, it wouldn't be a very long challenge, as CSS is fairly simple, but it would be a nice, big statement about how the community in general feels toward the recent actions of the MPAA and DVD consortium. Probably not legal at all. Still, it would be a fun thing to do.

D.net != useless waste of cpu time

[Inferno]

Useless? What is your CPU going to be doing otherwise? I've found that it hardly interferes with anything on my NT box, and the Linux server which HAS to be up and operational for those occasional logins is not doing anything besides using up precious Kinetic energy. Might as well be doing something.

Linux . Because a computer is a terrible thing to waste.

Distributed.net - Because CPU time IS BEING wasted.

redoing keys did slow the project down!

[MattMann]

redoing the keys, looks like it didn't slow the project down too much?

It might look like it didn't slow the project down too much, but a clear-headed person would not be fooled.

Oh, look, I just flipped a coin and it came out heads. Obviously, this coin doesn't come out tails too much, does it! Wanna bet me?

Re:any good?

[friedo]

That's why I like to run SETI@Home. With an encryption challenge, you know it's gonna break eventually, it's just a matter of permutation. SETI is much more exciting (and worthwhile) IMHO. For those of you who don't know, SETI@Home uses the Arecibo radio telescope to look for extraterrestrials. Work units are sent to people running the client which checks for things like gaussian curve spikes and other abnormalities. Also, they have clients for just about every platform you can think of.

Re:any good?

[Signail11]

Exciting: most people who compute work units for speed turn off the friendly screensaver, so I don't see how it's more exciting.
Just kidding; I understand what you mean, but I do disagree with you. SETI is a program with a noble objective, however, it is fundementally flawed, both in implementation and premise.

Implementation: checking work units multiple times (ie. many more than would be required to detect cheater clients) because of distribution/data collection inefficiencies does not neccesary seem very productive to me
Premise: Yes, it is almost certainly true that there are extraterrestial beings somewhere "out there." Nonetheless, there are two main obstacles that make it exceedingly unlikely that we will ever find anything: space and time. Space is pretty obvious; it's a big universe out there and radio signals, if any, will take a long time to propagate. Time is the big one: the probability that another civilization is at the same technological stage as us such that they use radio to communicate in astoundingly low. Just imagine: 200 hundred years ago, a mere drop in the bucket in geologic time, we could not even receive radio signals. 200 hundred years from now, whose to say that we won't be using fiber optics and laser relays to transmit information. Two cultures that are at different levels of technological accomplishment can rarely communicate or interact: look at the much smaller separation in time between the Europeans and Native Americans and the disconnect that occur then.

Seriously, I hope that they do find something. It would represent a milestone in human history that will force us to reconsider our perspective in the vast scheme of things. But I just don't think it's going to happen.

Re:any good?

[Electric Angst]

Maybe I've been hitting the Viridian's Site a bit too hard, but I believe the biggest problem with Distributed Computing as we currently know it is the amount of energy being consumed by people running the clients. I think that d.net, GIMP, and Seti@home all have things going for them, but none of these is as important as the air that we're breathing right now. I'd rather let my box go into standby, or *gasp* turn it off (when possible) and save a little energy than accomplish any of these goals.

Thanks, everyone!

[dbaker]

I'd like to again thank everyone for their support throughout this project. distributed.net is nothing without the amazing user support that we receive.

For the record, we received official confirmation and congratulations from CS Communications & Systems on our CS-Cipher solution.

For those that missed it:

• 
  Contest: CS-CIPHER
  Solution: 61 A3 9E 36 BF 4F F0

  The secret message is: CS-Cipher a ete presente en mars 97 a Fast Software Encryption (PARIS). Congratulations to the winner!

Moo!

-dbaker
--
Daniel Baker - dbaker@cuckoo.com - dbaker@distributed.net