Re: Our lead over SolNet...?

Daniel Berlin (bmdberlin@worldnet.att.net)
Fri, 2 May 1997 21:47:29 -0400

almost time for a deschall list FAQ :)
a.Somebody (don't remember at the moment, not looking through all my mail)
determined that if we cooperated, assuming either exponential or linear
growth, it really wouldn't make much difference.
b. I don't see why they don't do it randomly, if they don't already. If
you really wanted to be malicious to solnet (the setting isn't
configurable YET on our clients) you would just request the max keyblocks
(on a pentium 133 under winnt, it's around 25) keyblocks, get them, quit,
and repeat this. It takes 12 hours for them to expire keyblocks. I figure
by then you could have requested a significant portion of keyspace (don't
feel like doing the math), which, if you were malicious enough to do any of
this in the first place, you would probably want to keep. You could
theoreticaly control a certain percentage of the keyspace (this is what
clients do obviously, but they actually take the time to crack).
anyway
i'll shutup now
Dan

----
From: Charles E. Novitski <c.novitski@cmich.edu>
To: deschall@gatekeeper.megasoft.com
Date: Friday, May 02, 1997 9:38 PM
Subject: Re: Our lead over SolNet...?

>I have a few naive questions. Are both (all) groups starting from the
>smallest keys and working up? (So the slower group's work is always
>redundant?)
>a) Why don't the groups work cooperatively, checking non-overlapping
keys
>sets first?
>b) If cooperation isn't possible, why doesn't one group select keys by
an
>alternative method, ie. either at random, or starting from the other end?
>
>(I gather from their web page that one group, the DES Violation group has
>given up in response to SolNet progress.)
>
>>>(A quick aside before the main body of my
>>>email: How is SolNet managing
>>>2GKeys/sec with only 4000 hosts reporting
>>>for that time period (7:00pm EDT today)?
>>>They must be running a richer mix of machines by
>>>a long shot, even if you consider that some
>>>of our hosts/day are from dynamic IP's.)
>>>
>>>All arguements about competition/cooperation
>>>aside, I did some quick calculations to see
>>>how long our lead over SolNet will last under
>>>a few (bad) assumptions:
>>>
>>>1) That we worked today (Friday) at the same rate as
>>>on Thursday.
>>>
>>>2) That we and SolNet will continue to work at the same
>>>rates we are now (As I said, _bad_ (but easier) assumptions).
>>>
>>>Under those assumptions, I calculate that our lead will
>>>last 600800 seconds, or 6 days, 23 hours.
>>>
>>>We are unlikely to find the key in that time period :)
>>>
>>>So let's recruit like crazy this weekend, and get those
>>>2GKey/sec 64bit bitslice clients out!
>>>
>>>Or, we could all enjoy the beautiful weather and
>>>go rollerblading or participate in our outdoor activity
>>>of choice.
>>>
>>>
>>>----------------------------------------------
>>>Ethan O'Connor |Does cracking DES seem like too
>>>zudark@mit.edu |easy a challenge? Join the
>>> |Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search
>>> |http://www.mersenne.org/
>>
>>
>>
>
>