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Re: Mathematics > NSA + GCHQ


At 12:12 PM 8/23/97 -0400, [email protected] wrote:
>DEScrack was only done on a relatively few computers.  If a really big
>prize was offered (In this lotto, you just run this screen saver which
>uses less bandwidth than pointcast... The chinese radio lottery via the
>internet), you could get almost every computer into the act.

This is a good point. It took $10,000 (plus some hope for fame) to motivate
thousands of computer users to participate in DESCHALL.  But $10k is not
all that much money. Few people will go to extraordinary measures to get a
long shot chance at winning this relatively small sum. Note that there were
few DESCHALL participants from China, India, and other countries where
there is a substantial numbers of computers.

Now imagine if the prize was $1,000,000 or $10M. That's real money to just
about every student out there. Every box at every university would be
working on it. Employees would install the cracker first and ask their
sysadmin later. If at all.

I you offer such sums, people would find cycles you didn't even know existed.

BTW, I am thinking about organizing corporate sponsorships to beef up the
reward for the RC5-64 crack. I am quite certain that at a $1M prize
offering, I would be cracked faster than DES.


--Lucky Green <[email protected]>
  PGP encrypted mail preferred.
  DES is dead! Please join in breaking RC5-56.
  http://rc5.distributed.net/