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RC5-64 Project Teeters At The Halfway Mark
Soft writes: "The RC5-64 statistics page indicates that 49.779% of the keyspace has been exhausted, which means that at the current rate of 0.080% per day, the halfway mark should have been reached by the weekend. Anybody want to speculate on the actual completion date, correlating with the speed plots on the other stats page, the current rate, etc.?"
While I certainly don't want to disparage efforts to find cures for cancer et all, it's hard not to imagine a better use for spare CPU cycles than SETI, given that the discovery of extraterrestial intelligent life would be the greatest discovery in the history of our species.
It is doubly important in that - short of them showing up and introducing themselves - this is the *only* way we can carry out this research. There is no SETI analogue to the lab rat.
In a perfect world, there would be a 100% survey of the electromagnetic spectrum (and the corresponding analysis) going on continuously and in near real-time. Until then, we've got SETI-at-home.
Why not join in?
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/psummary.php3
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Need more hardware...
I wonder if there's going to be an iPaq client...
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Nice try, but the results of the request have been boosted by Moore's Law. As CPU power increases, the amount of RC5-64 Blocks that *EACH* computer can process per time "T" also increases. In other words, my AMD K6-300 cranks out about 12 keys per day, whereas my Wife's AMD Thunderbird 750 cranks out aproximately 70 keys per day. As CPU increases, the contest accelerates. When we first took on this contest, we were looking at about 12 years to finish. Now we're looking at 8 years total at the *CURRENT* rate, and this doesn't even make RC5 the default contest for most new clients (OGR's - Optimal Golumb Rulers are the default). Geeks like myself have also kept around older boxes (like Pentiums) to do nothing all day but crack blocks.
Secret windows code
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
I _like_ that the RC5/OGR code is optimized for each CPU instruction set. It means a few things:
SETI does not optimize per platform, thus I will not use it. I can't stand to think that some of my available CPU is being simply wasted. I run AMD CPUs at work: I want 3DNow optimization on those clients. I have a G4 Cube in my bedroom: I want AltiVec optimization on that. Bovine does both IIRC, SETI does neither.
It's the same to me as the idea that when I buy an Intel product for, say, $200, that a dollar or two might go to those dopey Blue Men. That's why (among many reasons) I don't buy Intel products.
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
The D.Net client is a really nice client - it just works. I have never had any problems with it.
People are different, and therefore some people think D.Net is cool and others think Seti is the much more interesting.
I'm part of the Arstechnica Distributed Computing (DC) team and we have a nice little "portal" (called the Food Court), for all our teams. For each team there is a nice little description about the project.
I would recommend a visit, if you would like to know a bit about the different DC projects that exists.
You are, of course, more than welcome to join one of our teams if you like ;)
The projects I personally find most interesting and would recommend if you find D.Net and Seti pointless, are the Folding@Home and Genome@Home projects. An explanation of Folding@Home can be found here. Genome@Home has a similar cause - it's the same people that's behind both projects.
We also have a pretty cool forum where your are welcome to ask questions.
Important note! Our Folding@Home team's website has just changed to a new host, therefore the link on the Food Court page (http://www.teameggroll.com) doesn't work right now! Instead, you should use http://www.teameggroll.org.
Greetings Pointwood
Funny - UD teamed up with, yes you guessed it, Distributed.net some time ago - you can find a press release in the D.Net website.
The UD project is heavily sponsered by Intel and AFAIK that shows - the client is much faster on the P4 than on anything else...
Greetings Pointwood
So fire up the config screen and change the priority. I use RC5,OGR=0,DES=0,CRC=0 so all spare cycles go to RC5.
command line is dnetc -config, select option 2, then look for Load-work precedence
You think SETI is pointless but cranking on a problem that is known to have a solution is not? If you want something significant that doesn't have a known outcome, try OGR from d.net or look for large prime numbers - at least these projects will create some new knowledge (and OGR actually has some practical applications as well), whereas we already know that given enough time, the RC5-64 key will eventually be found.
RC5-64, on the other hand, will create no real new knowledge upon its completion. It is an excercise in futility.
RC5-64 started 3 1/2 years ago. In that time, more people have joined and computers have gotten much, much more powerful. Even if the number of participants remains steady and 100% of the keyspace has to be searched, the second half will take less than 3 1/2 years.
RC5-64 is safe today. But maybe not tomorrow.
Or as the pessimist would put it: After four years (or whatever) of intense calculations involving 300.000 computers, they have finally established the single first bit the 64 bit encryption key.
Or the optimist: They have now managed to cover an entire 63 bit keyspace, showing that a 63 bit key can be cracked, and that just a single bit remains until the goal of cracking rc5-64 is reached.
It's a good thing our world is linear rather than logarithmic, isn't it? All the bickering about half empty and half full seems pretty harmless in comparison...
What was the question again?
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Some companies have discovered the distributed computing trend and jumped on the bandwagon to get free computing power. If you want to support non-profit, open, public research, instead of closed, for-profit efforts, here are a few projects:
Seti At Home (yeah, we all knew that)
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Protein Folding At Home
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/Cosm/
Genome At Home
http://genomeathome.stanford.edu/
I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones I run.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I don't want to run RC5 clients until the source code is released.
I'd like to have it run on older computers (Atari ST), and even on my Timex watch so that if I ever win, people read "yeah, the RC5 challenge was found by a watch !" .
It's unlikely to happen, but it would rock.
{{.sig}}
to quote Saturday Night Live:
"Are you stupid or English?"
In the time it took for you to "rant" on slashdot you could have clicked 1 link from the dnet stats page to go to www.distributed.net where you would have found everything you need to know.
You sir, are a moron.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
While I mostly agree I also beleive that anyone with $1M can build an RC5-64 cracker - I'm sure that the NSA would/will/has/could build one if they want to (a paper design I did a few years back is here) - roll on RC5-96
That's what it really comes down to, we can go on all day about whether the distro cancer models and methodology have much in common with reality. The same is true with the Pascal wager that is Seti. Out of all the the distro projects out there I think GIMPS and RC5 are the only ones with results. Maybe its best to be on the 'winning team' i.e. something that produces results.
I think you're just pushing the moral button. What if someone wrote a client to continue the THC tumor shrinking research but you are staunchly anti-drugs? If Sally Struthers makes a really pathetic ploy with starving children and all for her distro project (could happen) would you be morally obligated to go with the immediate improving of health of children or wait out for the cancer lottery ticket?
I don't think people really give a shit either way, they'll download a client and play with it until they get sick of it. Things will change when the multipurpose 'screensaver' is written and lets you pick which project you feel like going with that day or week. Hmm, today I feel like helping the PRC crack some NSA codes, etc.
What absolute nonsense. It's not "news" that this level of encrpytion is safe to use. Given the algorithm used to try and brute force the key, it's always been possible to say "Ok, it would require x number of processors running for y years to break this key".
rc5-64 proves nothing but the concept of distributed computing. That aside it's nothing but an absolutely immense waste of power (Think of the additional power used by hundreds of thousands of processors running at 100% 24/7 - and no, they're not using the same amount of power just by being on. Almost all modern processors go into power saving mode when they're not being used), and a way to boast about your hardware: "Hey look! My computers do 12MKeys/s! I'm l33t!"
I know this comes off as a troll or a flame, but this subject irritates me enough as it is without people drawing false conclusions from the results.
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... could we please get back to work and use all
that power on something meaningfull, such as finding mersenne primes or Optimal Golomb Rulers.
RSA wanted to prove that neither 56 bit and 64 bit encryption isn't enough and that it is possible for a small crack senstive information protected by 56 or 64 bit encryption.
It will take som time to finish the 64-bit RC5 challenge, but it can be done.
Question is should it be finished? Not in my oppinion! Sure they will win $10.000, but that's about the only positive I can see in this. Used wast amount of power and computing time in doing so, only to give RSA reason to sell 128-bit RC5 and argue that it really is secure.
Wote with your CPU power and switch to something we all can benefit from. Larger primes and OGRs are candidates, but I'm sure there are others.
Thomas S. Iversen
...or at least that's my prediction. Call me cynical (hiya, Cynical), but there are a quite a few people running a hacked RC5 client who aren't interested in breaking encryption -- they're interested in being number one on the list; screw winning $10K -- seeing one's name in lights is far more important. Although distributed.net has caught people doing this in the past, there's still a chance that the correct key was glossed over in the rush to be first.
Now I'm putting all my CPU time towards finding a cure for cancer. IMO, United Devices' client is much better, too.
you have to be kidding me. The UD client is ram hungry, doesn't do multiple CPUs, and is windows only. The d.net client uses 600k of ram, handles as many cpus as you've got, and has a client for just about every OS/architecture there is.
Besides, UD is a for-profit company...
I started over a year ago with the CSC challenge, and now I've moved onto the RC5-64 challenge because I have nothing better to do with my spare CPU cycles. Personally, I think SETI is pointless. And it doesn't hurt me at all that if my machine happens to find the key that I get $2000. I just see it as a way for my existing CPU to potentially help pay for my next one.
The cancer drug client is Windows only, but I'd hazard a guess that at least half of the CPU cycles donated to the encryption contest come from Windows machines. Use your machine for a good, useful purpose!
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
And this differs from a typical slashdot set of comments how?
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
This is good "news". Rougly 3½ year and only halfways. That proves that RC5-64 is fairly "safe" to use, so I can sleep well and know that people would have some really hard problems deciphering my secure data.
Distributed.net is good for everybodys privacy.
Each of the remaining keys is equally likely to be the right one, so I would assume the best guess is that the correct key is found after searching half of the remaining keyspace. That would be 669 days (if I have calculated correctly).
Now I'm putting all my CPU time towards finding a cure for cancer. IMO, United Devices' client is much better, too.
http://members.ud.com/home.htm
I'm a member of the Sitepoint team.
Dnetc didn't seem to run on my computer very well, and it didn't provide tangible results. With this, it shows you what you're working on in a lot of detail.
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
Yes it would but the reason that OGR is first is that is is a useful project.
See the distributed net site for details, but in essance a new, larger Optimal G... Rulers can be used to improve the efficancy of solutions to a range of scientific and engineering problem.
RC5 is now just meant to be a fallback if there are no more useful projects to do. I reasonable sure the only reason that it still has such a large keyrate is all the network / machine with ancient clients on them that know nothing about the newer challenges.
--
Amiga RC5/OGR Team
I think you're on to something with the Distributed MMORPG, with this caveat:
:P
Integrate the other problems into the game and allow characters to choose to sell their processor cycles for some sort of game credit. For instance, whenever your character is inactive, she prays to the goddess of SETI (which is the game representation of using cpu cycles for the SETI@HOME project), and she slowly accumulates extra gold or hit points or something.
A convergence like this would generate a lot of good press and interest in your game, not to mention generating interest in distributed computing projects. Might be just the thing to push one of those many GPL MMORPG projects to completion.
Man I have an idea like every two seconds, I wish they were all this good
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Who bothers with RC5 anymore? All my systems are busy cranking away at calculating the number of bugs in Windows 2000 with the W2KB client.
I thought we were working on RC5-128 now. hmm.
That's impossible, for now. RC5-64 started some years ago, when distributed.net finished RC5-56. The difference between the two is a factor of 256, and many people said that even RC5-64 was too difficult. Maybe they had a point... 3+ years for half of the keyspace is long enough.
RC5-128 would be 2^64 times longer that RC-64, and that's about 16.000.000.000.000.000.000 times longer.
If Moore's law keeps pumping, computers will have sufficent power in maybe 100 years...
This was the project that ignited massively distributed computing. The biggest projects are obviously SETI@Home and the handful of protein folding clients, but we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. This is still such an untapped resource that we will undoubtedly see some really incredible stuff in the near future. And the folks at RC5 were the ones that got the ball rolling.
Thanks.
RC5 press room, Circa 2004
contest organizer - The final results are in.
press - That's great! People are asking, how much of the keyspace was searched?
contest organizer - Actually, 100% was searched.
press - That's Amazing! What are the chances of exhausting the keyspace and finding the winner on the very last key? They must be mindbogglingly low!
contest organizer - Well, heh.. actually it's about 100%, because there was a tiny bug in the client. We'll have to start over.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
And don't forget that over the next couple of years, processor speeds will increase, so all the RC5 geeks who upgrade will be able to crack more blocks faster than today.
"One of the consequences of the second law of thermodynamics is that a certain amount of energy is necessary to represent information."
"An ideal computer running at 3.2 degrees Kelvin [temperature of the cosmic background radiation of the universe] would consume 4.4*10^-16 ergs every time it set or cleared a bit."
"If we built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured all of its energy for 32 years, without any loss, we could power a computer to count up to 2^192."
"These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than mattter and occupy something other than space."
Damn I love that. Bring on the cryptanalytic algae!
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The default priority puts OGR first. Wouldn't RC5 go faster if it was first?
"I forgot my mantra."