distributed.net

distributed.net

URL	http://www.distributed.net/
Type of site	volunteer computing
Owner	Distributed Computing Technologies, Inc.
Launched	1997

distributed.net (or Distributed Computing Technologies, Inc. or DCTI) is a worldwide distributed computing effort that is attempting to solve large scale problems using otherwise idle CPU time. It is officially recognized as a non-profit organization under U.S. tax code 501(c)(3).

Currently, distributed.net is working on RC5-72 (breaking RC5 with a 72-bit key)^[1], and has recently completed the OGR-25 project^[2], which searched for 25 point optimal Golomb rulers. RC5-72 has an expected completion date of over one thousand years. Both problems are part of a series— OGR is part of an infinite series; RC5 currently has eight unsolved challenges from RSA Security, although in May 2007, RSA Security announced^[3] that they would no longer be providing prize money for a correct key to any of their secret key challenges.

As of 2001, distributed.net was estimated to have a throughput of over 30 TFLOPS.^[4] Modern throughput is likely to be much higher.

1 History
2 Official projects
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

History

A coordinated effort was started in February 1997 by Earle Ady and Christopher G. Stach II of Hotjobs.com and New Media Labs fame, as an effort to break the RC5-56 portion of the RSA Secret-Key Challenge, a 56-bit encryption algorithm that had a $10,000 USD prize available to anyone who could find the key. Unfortunately, this initial effort had to be suspended as the result of SYN flood attacks by participants upon the server.^[5]

A new independent effort, named distributed.net, was later coordinated by Jeff Lawson in March 1997 to resume the effort. A cow head was selected as the icon of the application and the project's mascot.^[6] The RC5-56 challenge was solved on October 19, 1997 after 250 days.^[7]

The next project was the RC5-64 challenge which took nearly five years to complete before the correct key (0x63DE7DC154F4D039) was found on July 14, 2002 decrypting the message to the plaintext "some things are better left unread".^[8]

Official projects

"dnetc" is the name of the software program which users run to participate in the projects. It is available for a large number of platforms, and is a command line program with an interface to configure it. As of May 2007^[update], Win32/x86 is the most used configuration, with Mac OS X/PPC in second place, and Linux/x86 in third place.^[9]

Timeline of projects hosted by distributed.net, as of October 2008^[update]

Current

RSA Lab's 72-bit RC5 Encryption Challenge — In progress (although RSA Labs has discontinued sponsorship)

Cryptography

RSA Lab's 56-bit RC5 Encryption Challenge — Completed 19 October 1997 (after 250 days and 47% of the key space tested).
RSA Lab's 56-bit DES II-1 Encryption Challenge — Completed 24 February 1998 (after 39 days)^[10]
RSA Lab's 56-bit DES II-2 Encryption Challenge — Ended 17 July 1998 (found independently by the EFF DES cracker after 2.5 days)
RSA Lab's 56-bit DES-III Encryption Challenge — Completed 19 January 1999 (after 22.5 hours with the help of the EFF DES cracker)
CS-Cipher Challenge — Completed 16 January 2000 (after 60 days and 98% of the key space tested).^[11]
RSA Lab's 64-bit RC5 Encryption Challenge — Completed 14 July 2002 (after 1757 days and 83% of the key space tested).^[7]

Golomb Rulers

Optimal Golomb Rulers (OGR-24) — Completed 13 October 2004^[12] (after 1552 days)
Optimal Golomb Rulers (OGR-25) — Completed 25 October 2008^[13] (after 3006 days)
Optimal Golomb Rulers (OGR-26) — In progress