Distributed.net cracks the RC5-64 cipher

Cory Doctorow 10:13 am Tue Oct 1, 2002

The Distributed.net project — a precursor to SETI@Home that used volunteer computer-time to attack giant, sophisticated ciphers — has cracked RC564. I used to have half a dozen computers working on this.

On 14-Jul-2002, a relatively characterless PIII-450 in Tokyo returned the winning key to the distributed.net keyservers. The key 0x63DE7DC154F4D039 produces the plaintext output:

The unknown message is: some things are better left unread

Unfortunately, due to breakage in scripts (dbaker's fault, naturally) on the keymaster, this successful submission was not automatically detected. It sat undiscovered until 12-Aug-2002. The key was immediately submitted to RSA Labs and was verified as the winning key.

Link

Discuss

(Thanks, Dave!)

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