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Crack the Code and Win a Million Bucks

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the mod-everything-by-2 dept.

JS_RIDDLER noted a Toronto Star article about a sort of contest to crack some encryption and win a million bucks. The article is a bit fluffy, but it getst the point across... we wasted all those RC5 keys ;)

18 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. 2 bad... by internet-redstar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... they should have left an option open for people finding holes in the ACTUAL implementation... Now only mathematicians stand a chance - go, go, go, you few good number theoretisists not employed by the NSA! =-= insert favorite conspiricy theory here =-=

    1. Re:2 bad... by TedCheshireAcad · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Modern cryptographic algorithms are good enough - it's the protocols that need work. Security problems happen in the implementation, most of the time the algorithms are rock-solid. DES, being as old as it is, is still a pretty prominent work horse (at least in the form of 3DES). Phasing it out with Rijndael (AES) just takes alot of time and money.

      As for Elliptic Curve Cryptography as mentioned in this article - it's still in its infancy - at least compared to other ciphers. This is just a stupid publicity show. But I bet I can win that $1M with an investment of under $20.

      There is an old KGB proverb: "It is easier to break fingers than it is to break codes." So, using my $20 budget on a pipe cutter, fifty feet of rope, and an ice pick, I believe I can recover the key. ;)

  2. I read this and wonder about UNIX by ObviousGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They are using keys that sound big 168 bits, 256 bits, etc. But those aren't really that big, only 21 bytes and 32 bytes respectively. These sentences are longer than those keys.

    Then I note that UNIX limits passwords to 8 bytes. A measly 64 bits.

    I don't think I can sleep well knowing that all that stands between my data and some hacker is such a small string.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:I read this and wonder about UNIX by sm0yby · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes, 2^64 is a pretty large number. Your math depends on the fact that the password is padded to a 64-bit length before being hashed, though. What if it is padded to some other length, or indeed not padded at all? (This could for example be done using a stream cipher. Encrypt the password, followed by a known fixed-length string. The hash is the encrypted known string. I'm not saying such a scheme would be secure, though.)

      However, how many use the entire eight-bit character set in their completely random passwords? I don't know anyone who does. So you really don't have to try the entire range. I recall that English has about 1.3 bits of entropy per character - that would make a random word have about 1.3n bits of entropy. Eight characters would then make for 1351 (2^[1.3 * 8]) combinations.

      I am sure the above is flawed, and a random encryption key is a very different beast in the first place, but the point is still valid: in order to crack a password represented as 64 bits, you don't have to try 2^64 combinations. If that was so, we would all just move to 16-bit Unicode for representing passwords and the problem would be over with.

      --
      Been modded interesting, insightful and funny. Why does real life have to be so different?
  3. The real promise of this technology... by bc90021 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...is that it uses much smaller keys with the same level of encryption. This makes it useful for handhelds and phones, and network devices. If you've never heard of this before, chances are you're already using it, too, as this is prevalent already in many of the aforementioned devices.

    --
    libertarianswag.com
  4. It strikes me that... by ihtagik · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Anyone with the capability to solve the math required to break the encryption might do a lot better than one million dollars.

    If they were malicious, all they'd have to do was wait a year or so until the encryption was incorporated into mission-critical applications and then use their knowledge to gain access to those applications. Something tells me that THAT would be worth a lot more than the cool million they are currently offering.

  5. Huh? by madgeorge · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Agree or disagree, I usually at least understand Slashdot editorial comments. But I don't get "we wasted all those RC5 keys". You mean we cracked them when they could have been used? I hope not. You mean we cracked them without the promise of 1 meelion dollar bills? Ok, greedy, but I'm with you.

    Seriously, how do you waste a key?

    -madgeorge

  6. NSA accomplishments exaggerated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    The NSA's storied past includes breaking the code the Japanese used during World War II to find out about plans to invade Midway Island.

    Quite an accomplishment, considering the NSA wasn't founded until 1952.
  7. Better than RSA? by jrockway · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think the company who came up (or rather markets) ECC [eliptic curce cryptography] should be careful about saying that ECC is more secure than RSA. RSA has stood up to A LOT of cryptanalysis, simply because of it's age. ECC might have bad keys or something else we don't know about simply because we have not have time to try all attacks yet. Who knows, tomorrow someone may find a trivial algorithm for taking the discrete logarithm on an EC (rendering ECC useless). Then again, someone may find a way of doing a simple discrete logarithm (rendering RSA useless). Both are highly unlikely, but hey -- stranger things have happened.

    Basically, take a company's claim with a grain of salt. Right now I'll keep my data encrypted with something more tested (3DES anyone?).

    --
    My other car is first.
  8. What about the DMCA? by Martigan80 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and we'd most certainly be happy to consider them for a lifetime position

    What position are the lawyers thinking about after the break the encryption? ;-)

    --
    This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
  9. You raise very good points. by Sheetrock · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I would tend to agree with you that concerns about the security of ECC are overblown, and tend to come from the common wisdom that old-and-proven is better than new-and-unproven.

    There's a general uneasiness in much of the cryptographic community regarding ECC that comes from the thought that with a new and elegant cryptographic algorithm or methodology there is often a new and elegant attack that renders it worthless in practical applications. As I'm sure you realize (but others may not) the ability of a methodology to withstand conventional attacks is no indicator of long-term viability; algorithms may only be proven unsafe, not safe (except perhaps for one-time pads under certain circumstances).

    I happen to hold out hope for this technique, but it takes time in the field for confidence to be built. This contest may help, but by no means is it absolute proof of the security of the technique (although one would be hard pressed to make a million dollars hoarding a working attack on ECC to themselves).

    --

    Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
    -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




  10. Time for some coding by adrianbaugh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anyone (outside patent encumbered countries) working on a Free implementation? It should be okay in the EU, for "allowing interoperability with existing products".

    --
    "'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
    - JRR Tolkien.
  11. It's not as much a matter of IF someone manages... by WegianWarrior · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...to crack it, but as of how long it will take them. Information that is worth a lot today may be worthless tomorrow, and by next week it'll be history. So the question isn't about making a perfect encoding (we allready have one, namely 'one time pads'), but finding the best encoding for the application. Also bear in mind the rule of thumb that states that the thoughter the code, the more difficult (think CPU-cycles and batterydrain) it is to encode it in the first place. Off course, just how strong thats strong enought will change as the tools for encryption, decryption and codebreeaking gets stronger.


    Remember folks, an encrypted message don't have to be unbreakable, it just has to be hard enought to break. One rule of thumb is that it should cost more to break than the one breaking it will earn on doing so.


    Besides, one can learn a lot about whats going on even if you can break the code. Where does the signal originates? Where is it heading. Does it occour on a frequent basis? What is the matter of transmitting? The more you learn about the message, the more you learn about the reason it's beeing sendt - even if you don't know what it says. THEN you can often start using social enginering to gain access to the key, or better yet, to the unencrypted message.

    --
    Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
  12. Honeypot! by redelm · · Score: 2, Interesting
    There may be some acedemic credit, but isn't this most likely a honeypot or TLA recruiting/watchlist scheme?

  13. XM Radio by Silicon+Mike · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I went over to their website and parused around... Seems they did the security to XM Radio, http://www.certicom.com/download/aid-78/success_XM Radio.pdf) which humors me because XM Radio was hacked about 2 months after it went live.. All you need is a part from an old Dish Network reciever and a soldier iron.

  14. Not a Fallacy by jmegq · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Of course, if you *read* the counter-argument you link to, you see that Schneier thinks this sort of contest is fine:

    There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. The RSA challenges, both their factoring challenges and their symmetric brute-force challenges, are fair and good contests. These contests are successful not because the prize money is an incentive to factor numbers or build brute-force cracking machines, but because researchers are already interested in factoring and brute-force cracking. The contests simply provide a spotlight for what was already an interesting endeavor.

    In this case, finding clever ways to factor ECCs is actually a number-theoretically interesting thing to do.

  15. ECC vs ECC = AC (acronym collision!) by mnemotronic · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Ack! Just when I thought that ECC meant Error Correction Code, along comes ECC, which means Elliptical Curve Cryptography.

    It seems that these two two acronyms, which are very different in meaning, are likely to show up in the context of computer-related discussions :

    • "The kernel does ECC"
    • "ECC is built into the chipset"
    • " ... including 28 bit ECC"
    • "The ECCs in East D.C. are pieces of the PCs"
    --
    The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
  16. Re:Brute force by Thuktun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No. It's just that you know you're in trouble when people use "age of the universe" as a unit of measurement. It'll break, it's just that it'll take so long that when you (or rather your far distant descendants) crack it, there probably won't be a great deal of point in knowing it.

    At that point, it's simpler to use the Caveman attack:

    Walk over, beat subject about the cranium with a stout cudgel, and take the subject's computer containing the keys.