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Finding MD5 Collisions With Chinese Lottery

Posted by simoniker on from the soon-to-be-distributed-slashdotting dept.

Stanislav Shalunov writes "Jean-Luc Cooke posted a Usenet article describing a distributed webpage-based effort (Chinese Lottery) to find a collision in the MD5 function. All you need to do to participate in the effort is visit the URL that loads the code. The author comments: 'What is interesting about this approach - when we reach final release stage - is that any website that adds this small snippet of code to their pages will have their visitors working on the problem for the duration of their visit to the site'."

4 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. That's really interesting... by herrvinny · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's a really interesting way of doing it. For the people who don't know, here's a quick explanation:

    Java Applets, because of the sandbox they're run in, can't open up a network connection to any website, except for the websie they came from. Presumably, what they're doing is creating a small Java applet, that when loaded, executes some logic, then opens up a network connection back home and sends the results.

    Fascinating. This way, you don't have to bother installing something and hope it doesn't fsck up your computer. It might be slightly less efficient than a dedicated, installed program, but this way, they can harness the power of a computer just casually browsing a web page. Very innovative.

  2. Not very intensive. by LoneIguana · · Score: 4, Informative

    It certainly isn't using very many cpu cycles, the OS reports that my webbrowser is using less than 1% of the available cpu power

  3. Re:Normal Thread Priority by mlk · · Score: 5, Informative

    Java applets run as a different process to the browser, and it can (and very likely does) create a new thread, and set its priority to low.

    --
    Wow, I should not post when knackered.
  4. For anyone wanting the code... by Vaevictis666 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's the code:

    <!-- try IFRAME, else use LAYER -->
    <IFRAME SRC="http://www.jlcooke.ca/psearch/dmd5l.html" SCROLLING="NO" FRAMEBORDER="0" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="32">
    <LAYER SRC="http://www.jlcooke.ca/psearch/dmd5l.html" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="32" CLIP="0,0,100,32"></LAYER>
    </IFRAME>

    It' s making an iframe that loads the applet, and just does its own thing - by loading in the iframe it can call back to their host, rather than yours :P

    Someone should let him know that he needs to make his server parse .html files through PHP, 'cause he's got a PHP header that isn't being sent - oh yeah and better html please.