A scary thought about dnet

[rc5]

It seems dnet getting a great deal of computation power now. Do we know what exactly we are computating? If someone uses this to crack a regular unix password, it will be done in hours. This isn't saying dnet is cracking some other government's passwords now. However, that should be considered as an issue for people deciding to attend other new distributed computation projects. You never know what you are cracking.

 

[Robor]

Yep, I've read/heard this before. I think you just have to consider the source of the project and ask yourself if you trust them.

BTW, I've had several people tell me they don't want to run the SETI@Home client because they think it's gathering info from their system and sending it somewhere. I can't honestly say I'm 100% positive that's not happening so I accept their ignorance, I mean opinion.

Rob

 

[Paulson]

I've wondered this also.

I mean sure we're cracking and all, but just what are we cracking, 64bit encryption for what password?

It'd sure suck if they used us to get into some government computers or something...

 

[phatstyl]

now ask yourself this:
do you really think that we are out-powering the NSA, etc?
come on, be realistic, this is probrably MOTHING compared to what they and NASA must be using right now

 

[JWMiddleton]

phatstyl, Yep, I beleive we are out-powering NSA and NASA. SETI made it into the Guiness Book of World Records last summer as being the largest computer project ever based on the number of GFLOPS to date.

They (dnet and/or SETI) would have to be really dumb to be doing other than what they claim. RC5, for example, is too predictable in its block timing to be doing anything other than decoding a fixed size string. Passwords would not fit that format.

So, don't worry and keep crackin'

 

[Dazmite]

I'd have to agree with Phatstyl here, Think about it they had the internet for years before we heard about it. Heck they even have internet2 now thats many times faster thatn what we use now. Besides don't you think if it was something bad, The Government would have stopped it long ago.
Daz

 

[phatstyl]

right on dazmite!
do you think there gonna have is cracking Bin Ladins encrypted email?
i think now, what if we view the results somehow?? all of the sudden the govt has someone threatining to inform Bin Ladin if he isnt given "insertwhateveryouwanthere"

 

[ViRGE]

FYI gguys, the official word is that we're cracking a message from RSA that was supplied for the contest. For all we know, it might be the password into their accounting system.

 

[Double Trouble]

One of my mathematics professors in grad school used to work for the NSA, and though he couldn't reveal very much, he did say that they have some toys in there that would make us drool like you wouldn't believe.

Still, no matter how great their toys are, somehow I would think it very difficult for them to have more computing power than hudreds of thousands of fairly new PC's.

RSA supplied the challenge for RC5

 

[dalilama]

lmao..who cares.


as for the power of computing...how many 1+ghz systems are cracking now. good lord.

government or not...they have 256bit encrypt anyway.

 

[gogeeta13]

yeah, phatstyl hit the nail on the head!

besides, do you actually think the gov gives a rats ass? the NSA is likely already using 3D encryption. BTW, if you didnt know, textual internet was around in the 1960's. It used a modem somewhat like that thing in the matrix. it made a series of tones to transfer data. Right now, the NSA is working on the developement of an dynamic net that can interface with all types of input devices. i am sure that IBM is laughing at dnet as well. their giga node machines are designed so well i bet they would retire the rc5-64 code in less than a day. brute forcing this thing is probably the dumbest thing we can be doing. personally i think we sould be testing elements and compounds to see their effect on certain diseases. too bad the UD agent is soo bad, otherwise i would be all go.

 

[networkman]

LMAO!

Yeah right.. if I was gonna try and crack a code, I'd just start at the very beginning and try every combination till I found the right one. <buzzer sound>

Get real! I'd try and find a shortcut, either by trying combinations that have some kind of relevant value, or doing some research to narrow the possibilities before going the brute-force route. Yes, the brute-force method will arrive at the solution, but it may take so long that the encryption/password would likely be changed again, thus nullifying any work that was done.

I'm in this project(RC5) for the camaraderie of the team and, of course, the stats.

 

[Slahr Dzhe]

Well, I for one, know what the NSA is using for encryption right now.. and it isn't software. It isn't 256bit either. I can assure you that you guys are not hacking any US Government encryption systems.


SD

 

[DeepBlue]

This is hypothetical but if there are major breakthroughs in nano-technology there will be processors possibly billions of times faster than the ones today thus making all of the current encryption methods completely obsolete. Also, if there were processors like that the only real secure way to go would be a one time pad system.

 

[kmmatney]

A little off the subject, but I met a man who flew on the space shuttle, and another professor who is an &quot;alternate&quot; to fly on the shuutle for crystal growing experiments. He told me that the on-board space shuttle computer is amazingly primitive. There is so little memory onboard that that only the launch sequence can be loaded and nothing else when taking off. After launch, the mission code can then be uploaded on the computers. I beleive there was a few megabytes of RAM on each computer. I beleive there are a total of 5 backup computers for mission critical elements such as launch and re-entry.

The main reason for such weak computers is that the electronics are amazingly radiation-hardened. The RAM is based off of completely different (and older) technology than today's RAM.

 

[IJump]

As far as the NSA, when I was in the Army, we had computers that were 2 or 3 generations ahead from Sun. I am sure that in Baltimore, they have better ones than that since I was in a tactical unit.

The NSA has always been extremely secretive with there encryption methods and says that the DES was their biggest mistake ever (letting an algorithm that they reviewed and helped develop go public). Slahr Dzhe, I never used software based encryption when I was in the Army either.

 

[phule]

you'd think dnet would have an FAQ about the RC5 contest somewhere...

oh wait.