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DES III starts Today (Upgrade Those Clients!)

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the crack-keys dept.

David Hallowell writes " The DES III Contest is starting today at 5pm (GMT). Members of the distributed.net RC5 teams should make sure they download the latest client as they contain optimised code and a faster switchover to the DES contest. The DES contest will last for a maximum of 56 hours and the $10,000 prize will only be available if it is cracked within 24 hours. After that the prizes are on a sliding scale until it reaches 56 hours after which there's no prize."

4 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. Sliding scale by Phil+Gregory · · Score: 2

    This contest ought to be finished before we have a chance to look at the stats. (Although maybe Nugget'll post the stats after the fact.) The dimishing reward provides a nice incentive to get the contest done quickly. (And shows everyone just how weak DES is.) Distributed.net's stated purpose is "to serve as a gathering point for research and projects related to distributed processing." I'd say that reworking the clients to handle a rapid changeover to a new contest took a lot of thinking and programming.


    --Phil (Can't wait until v3. With source available, I might be able to run it at work.)

    --
    355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
  2. Any Clue What Deep Crack Runs? by Joe+Decker · · Score: 2

    Almost certainly nothing approaching a
    big-ol' multiuser system. A system like
    that, you'd probably either write everything
    from top to bottom yourself, or use some
    sort of standard RTOS. My money is on the
    former, but I don't know for sure.

    --
    I'm a nature photographer.
  3. EFF already one. by Joe+Decker · · Score: 2

    Pretty impressive that they did this before
    the problem was actually released. :-)

    You're probably confusing this with the
    contest six months ago. Check the RSA web
    site for more details.

    --
    I'm a nature photographer.
  4. Any Clue What Deep Crack Runs? by purple · · Score: 2

    I'm willing to bet it's a custom operating system. Why port Linux to custom hardware that serves one purpose, and one purpose alone: Take a whole lot of keys, and crack crack crack.

    Sure, linux has some great multitasking features, and it's very diverse. But it really isn't very powerful when it comes to multiprocessor support, nor do they really need task swapping...

    They said it was all "controlled" by a PC, though. I would imagine that that's a unix box... I can't imagine EFF running Windows :)

    I'm doing my part, 4 PIIs cracking in the office. I'll try to load up some more in the next hour.

    --
    Gamertag: ChrisCasey