Re: DES-Busting Screen Savers?

[The Deviant <deviant@pooh-corner.com>]

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On Wed, 24 Jul 1996, Bill Stewart wrote:

> Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 02:24:58 -0700
> From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
> To: cypherpunks@toad.com
> Subject: Re: DES-Busting Screen Savers?
> 
> Tim and others have discussed the effectiveness of random search
> vs. centralized servers, problems of cheating, scaling, etc.
> My take is that, if you can ignore scaling, the best approach
> is probably to have a central server that doles out keyspace
> and wraps around when it reaches 100%, and doesn't worry too much
> about collecting results - even if there are cheaters, machine
> failures, etc., and people don't finish their keyspace,
> it'll be more likely to cover the whole space than randoms.
> (Make it a web page, and use cut&paste to transfer to the
> search programs so they don't need to be network-equipped.)
> 

Agreed.  Also, we might want to keep the plaintext on, say, a floppy disk,
as to discourage the recovery technique (which, admitidly, is easier than
actually cracking the key).  I might suggest, also, to put the disks in
the hands of someone who has little or no reason to help.  Sadly, the best
person for the job that _I_ can think of would have to be "Dr." Dave.

> 
> To support scaling, make it easy for people to run subset servers;
> grab a chunk of keyspace from the main server and dole it out
> to people who ask you for it.  If you want to get fancy,
> hack a DNS server to allow people to register their machines
> as NNN.descrack.org, 0<=NNN<1000, so that people can find 
> subsets without having to ask the main server.
> 

Or hack it to use a 56 bit IP netmask-ish thing, and keep track of keys
that way (i'm not endorsing this idea, just pointing it out)

 --Deviant
"I understand by 'freedom of Spirit' something quite definite -
the unconditional will to say No, where it is dangerous to say
No.
           Friedrich Nietzsche


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