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Xbox Private Key Distributed Computing Project
aeiz writes "The Neo Project has added "The Xbox Public Key Challenge" to it's distributed computing client. The aim is to compute the 2048 bit private key that Microsoft uses to sign Xbox media. If it is a success, modchips wouldn't be necessary. Now many Xbox hacking and scene sites have started groups in order to compete with one another." gee, only 2048 bits? No problem *cough cough*.
nothing drives innovation like porn and piracy. bring on the flames.
By the time you finish this: There will be an XBOX 4
By the time they finish this, XBoxes will have evolved into higher life forms and be enslaving us all.
And I for one welcome our new X-shaped overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted Slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground deathmatch sessions.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
And you typed this post into a computer?
Yeah, but there's always the chance you get lucky and happen upon it early, plus it's more likely that you'll crack this one than there is finding aliens in white noise (*ducks*)
So, for a 64-bit key, it took five years? Correct me if I'm wrong, but at that rate, won't the 2048-bit key only take about 5 * 2^(2048 - 64), or a little over 2^1986 years to compute? I think that's somewhere around 10^587 times the age of our universe.
By that time, we'll all be playing Duke Nukem Forever on our Itanium-based systems running GNU/HURD and the Fesco windowing system. Open source software will have gone mainstream, giving us no reason to care about hacking the X-Box. Right?
Correction: Apparently (according to another poster), you need to add 10 bits to an RSA key to double the strength of the encryption. It would actually only take a little over 10^53 times the age of our universe to crack. So, never mind about having Duke Nukem Forever by then.