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RC5-64 Success

Posted by michael on from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.

Peter Trei writes "After over four years of effort, hundreds of thousands of participants, and millions of cpu-hours of work, Distributed.net has brute forced the key to RSA Security's 64 bit encryption challenge, winning a US$10,000 prize. Still outstanding Challenges carry prizes as high as $200,000. RSA's PR release is here. d.net's site has not yet been updated." Update: 09/26 16:59 GMT by CN : The good folks over at SlashNET are having a forum with the distributed.net crew on Saturday at 21:00 UTC. It'll be a great time to meet some of the people who made this possible.

11 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. No more RC5 in OpenBSD by chrysalis · · Score: 3, Funny

    Funny. The RC5 algorithm has just been removed from OpenBSD because of copyrights.


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    {{.sig}}
  2. With apologies to Douglas Adams by mh_tang · · Score: 4, Funny

    So tell me, was the answer "42"?

    1. Re:With apologies to Douglas Adams by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      This doesn't apply to Douglas Adams, of course.

      It does apply to most Slashdot comments, however.

  3. FINALLY. by KFury · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does this mean I can go back to alien hunting now?

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    Kevin Fox
  4. How crazy is this? by WalterGR · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the press release - "a coordinated team of computer programmers and enthusiasts, known as distributed.net, has solved the RC5-64 Secret-Key Challenge."

    If you remove a single element - the $10,000 award offered by RSA - then the press release would read more like,

    "A group of degenerate hackers [sic] cracked an encryption method owned by RSA Security Inc. The company has contacted law enforcement authorities, and an attempt to track down these hackers [sic] is currently under way. Under the DMCA, these criminals, when caught, faces sentances of up to..."

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    The Online Slang Dictionary
  5. Re:I went through... by OrangeSpyderMan · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wow, this stuff blew all those machines and you still want to do it? :-)

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    Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
  6. Lets see $10,000/1million= :( by Brigadier · · Score: 4, Funny


    In further news all participating Distributed.net users will be issued a check for 1 Cent.

  7. Re:Congratulations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    dude get with the times, @Home folded like a year ago.

  8. Sure, switch to seti... by Nugget · · Score: 3, Funny

    You just wait and see who has the last laugh when SETI@home manages to detect an alien signal only to discover that it's rc5 encrypted! :)

    1. Re:Sure, switch to seti... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Yes, well we can already do an educated guess of what is says. Something about "BASE".

  9. LOST: RC5 block crunching machine by EvilStein · · Score: 3, Funny

    I left a machine turned on at one of my former jobs, and it's crunching rc5 blocks still.

    I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT IS!

    Is there any way to find out where the rogue machine is? heh..
    It's submitting about 200 blocks a day. I just wish that I could FIND it...