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ECC2-109 Winners Certified
An anonymous reader writes "The ECC2-109 encryption challenge has now been broken and certified! Certicom announced on Tuesday that the winners, a team from Ars Technica and a member of TeamIMO, will both receive $2500 each for the matching distinguished pairs that has solved the elliptical curve encryption scheme."
$2,500 for breaking an encryption scheme. I wonder what SETI@Home will pay me for discovering an extraterrestrial...
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Only $2500? Some of the contests I've seen (namely having to do with the RSA encryption scheme) have been offering prizes upwards of 100 grand IIRC.
I bet the computing time just to break the code probably costed a wee bit more than $2500.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
The contest website doesn't mention a $1M prize, but from the "details" pdf, it looks like you can earn the $1M prize by solving 19 smaller problems, each with their own bounty. $30k for an "infeasable" problem seems a little low to me... I imagine the mob may pay more ;-)
From the pdf: The 109-bit Level I challenges are feasible using a very large network of computers. The 131-bit Level I challenges are expected to be infeasible against realistic software and hardware attacks, unless of course, a new algorithm for the ECDLP is discovered.
The Level II challenges are infeasible given today's computer technology and knowledge. The elliptic curves for these challenges meet the stringent security requirements imposed by existing and forthcoming ANSI banking standard
Challenge Field-size(in-bits) Estimated-number-of-machine-days Prize(US$)
Elliptic curves over f2^m - Exercises:
ECC2-79 79 352 Handbook of Applied Cryptography & Maple V software
ECC2-89 89 11278 Handbook of Applied Cryptography & Maple V software
ECC2K-95 97 8637 $ 5,000
ECC2-97 97 180448 $ 5,000
Level I challenges:
ECC2K-108 109 1.3 x 10 6 $ 10,000
ECC2-109 109 2.1 x 10 7 $ 10,000
ECC2K-130 131 2.7 x 10 9 $ 20,000
ECC2-131 131 6.6 x 10 10 $ 20,000
Level II challenges:
ECC2-163 163 6.2 x 10 15 $ 30,000
ECC2K-163 163 3.2 x 10 14 $ 30,000
ECC2-191 191 1.0 x 10 20 $ 40,000
ECC2-238 239 2.1 x 10 27 $ 50,000
ECC2K-238 239 9.2 x 10 25 $ 50,000
ECC2-353 359 1.3 x 10 45 $ 100,000
ECC2K-358 359 2.8 x 10 44 $ 100,000
Elliptic curves over Fp - Exercises:
ECCp-79 79 146 Handbook of Applied Cryptography & Maple V software
ECCp-89 89 4360 Handbook of Applied Cryptography & Maple V software
ECCp-97 97 71982 $ 5,000
Level I challenges:
ECCp-109 109 9.0 x 10 6 $ 10,000
ECCp-131 131 2.3 x 10 10 $ 20,000
Level II challenges:
ECCp-163 163 2.3 x 10 15 $ 30,000
ECCp-191 191 4.8 x 10 19 $ 40,000
ECCp-239 239 1.4 x 10 27 $ 50,000
ECCp-359 359 3.7 x 10 45 $ 100,000
Nasa will be the one awarding your prize... A pair of handcuffs, followed by a rag soaked with ether.
Hmmm, I received the same treatment visiting the Neverland Ranch when I was young.
Now let's run the same test, but instead of attacking the algorithm, let's see how many hours it takes to social engineer the key :)
I wonder what would happen if China began requiring all computers in the country to run some unspecified distributed application.
Not trolling, just musing. I doubt such a thing would happen in any country.
True story.
Anything intellectual means immediate ellimination. Dumb as a brick eye-candy stays and rates highly. Hypocrisy, backstabbing, lack of general knowledge and an overinflated ego equate to bonus points.
I think my work place must be a reality show.
Is it just me, or is there no real point to these encryption challenges? Brute forcing one particular key doesn't help you attack the encryption algorithim in general, and we can already calculate about how long it will take to crack with current processors. Other than the prize money, there is no reason to participate (except maybe for bragging rights, but finding an algorithmic flaw would get you so much more). Perhaps the prize money and CPU time might be better spent searching for a cure for cancer? I know there's a distributed computing project out there that does just that (no link right now, I'm lazy), and this *is* a case where the computers are just as good at calculating numbers for cracking encryption as calculating numbers for saving lives.
ECC ("this Certicom encryption system") has turned out to be exactly as hard to break as Certicom and everyone else expected - if anything, the results of this challenge increase our confidence in it.
/. moderators sometimes...
109 bits was deliberately chosen to be short enough to break. The next challenge is 131 bits, which is also considered breakable (though it will be about 2048 times harder).
After that, you get on to the "Level II" challenges, which are not considered breakable. They start at 163 bits, the least recommended for real use, and would be about 140 billion times harder to break.
I worry about the
Xenu loves you!