TA DC Projects | Cryptography

Cryptography

Project RC5 [RC5]

The "Bovine" RC5 effort was formed to take the responsibilities of coordinating and maintaining the RC5 servers that are needed to distribute key blocks to work on to all of the participating client programs. We depend heavily - entirely - on the participation of people like yourself, as we intend to solve this project via the use of brute force, trying every possible key there is.

We know this method works! On 19 October 1997 at 1325 UTC, we found the correct solution for RSA Labs' 56-bit secret-key challenge. (That's RC5-32/12/7 56-bit for you stats junkies.) The key was 0x532B744CC20999, and it took us 250 days to locate. Then, on 14 July 2002 at 0150 UTC we found the winning key for the 64-bit secret-key challenge. That key was 0x63DE7DC154F4D039 and took us 1,757 days to locate.

RSA Labs is offering a US$10,000 prize to the group that wins this contest.

RC5-56: 'The unknown message is: It's time to move to a longer key length'
RC5-64: 'The unknown message is: Some things are better left unread'
RC5-72: ???

[Home Page] [Download] [Setup] [FAQ] [Stats]

RC5-56    [Official Stats] [Official TeAm Stats] [Rank:] *Completed

RC5-64    [Official Stats] [Official TeAm Stats] [Rank:2] *Completed

RC5-72    [Official Stats] [Official TeAm Stats]   [Rank:19]

Project OGR [OGR]

In mathematics, the term "Golomb Ruler" refers to a set of non-negative integers such that no two distinct pairs of numbers from the set have the same difference. Conceptually, this is similar to a ruler constructed in such a way that no two pairs of marks measure the same distance. An Optimal Golomb Ruler (OGR) is the shortest Golomb Ruler possible for a given number of marks. However, finding (and proving) OGR's becomes exponentially more difficult as the number of marks increases, and it is for this reason that we have turned to the web for help in finding the OGR's with 24 and more marks.

Golomb rulers are named after Dr. Solomon W. Golomb, a professor of Mathematics with a special interest in combinatorial analysis, number theory, coding theory and communications. Dr. Golomb also has an interest in mathematical games and puzzles, having been a contributer to many columns in the Scientific American "Mathematical Games". OGR's have many applications including sensor placements for X-ray crystallography and radio astronomy. Golomb rulers can also play a significant role in combinatorics, coding theory and communications, and Dr. Golomb was one of the first to analyze them for use in these areas.

[Home Page] [Download] [Setup] [FAQ] [Stats]

OGR-24 [Official Stats] [Official TeAm Stats] [Rank:3] *Completed

OGR-25 [Official Stats] [Official TeAm Stats] [Rank:2]

MD5CRK [MD5CRK]

The aim of MD5CRK is to raise awareness in the IT industry that MD5 is not secure for many applications. We aim to disprove one of the fundamental requirements of a secure message digest: No two inputs can be found which produce the same digest - this is also known as a collision.
In cryptography, there can be no doubt in an algorithm's security. Demonstrating a counter-example to a required property in an algorithm effectively renders the algorithm insecure.

[Home Page] [Official Stats] [Official TeAm Stats] [Unofficial Stats] [Download] [Setup] [FAQ] [Rank:10] *Completed

PrimeGrid [PRG]

PrimeGrid is a PerlBOINC testing project, trying to deal with RSA Factoring Challenge - trying to split the 193-digit number into two factors that multiplied form the original number. The resources needed are very big, and we focus more on the PerlBOINC scheduler system than application optimisation, however, if we are very lucky, we will find the number - the application is fully working. Both PerlBOINC and the PrimeGrid client are in development and early stages of testing, and new user account creation may frequently be disabled.

[Home Page] [Official Stats] [Official TeAm Stats] [Unofficial Stats] [Download] [Setup] [FAQ] [Rank:-]