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                Date: 1999-01-19
                 
                 
                DES/Crack: Neuer Weltrekord 22 Stunden
                
                 
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      q/depesche  99.1.19/4 
updating      99.1.19/2     
 
DES/Crack: Neuer Weltrekord 22 Stunden 
 
Die Weltpartie von Krypto-Knackern hat den 56bit DES  
Schlüssel in 22. Stunden 15 Minuten aufgemacht. Den  
bisherigen Weltrekord hielt der Brute/Force/Hobel der  
Electronic Frontier Foundation (65 Stunden),  "Deep Crack"  
hat auch bei diesem Joint Effort kräftig mitgewirkt.    
Distributed.net ist seit Stunden schwer zu erreichen, die  
Maschinen sind halt müd. 
 
 
blitz/relayed by 
Lothar Fritsch fritsch@fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de 
J. Pepelnik" <pepelnik@gmx.net 
arne_weitzl@magicvillage.de (Arne Weitzl) 
 
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RSA DATA SECURITY CONFERENCE, SAN JOSE, Calif.,  
January 19, 1999 -- Breaking the previous record of 56 hours,  
Distributed.Net, a worldwide coalition of computer  
enthusiasts, worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's  
(EFF) "Deep Crack," a specially designed supercomputer,  
and a worldwide network of nearly 100,000 PCs on the  
Internet, to win RSA Data Security's DES Challenge III in a  
record-breaking 22 hours and 15 minutes. The worldwide  
computing team deciphered a secret message encrypted  
with the United States government's Data Encryption  
Standard (DES) algorithm using commonly available  
technology. From the floor of the RSA Data Security  
Conference & Expo, a major data security and cryptography  
conference being held in San Jose, Calif., EFF's "Deep  
Crack" and the Distributed.Net computers were testing 245  
billion keys per second when the key was found. 
 
First adopted by the federal government in 1977, the 56-bit  
DES algorithm is still widely used by financial services and  
other industries worldwide to protect sensitive on-line  
applications, despite growing concerns about its vulnerability.  
RSA has been sponsoring a series of DES-cracking contests  
to highlight the need for encryption stronger than the current  
56-bit standard widely used to secure both U.S. and  
international commerce. 
 
"As today's demonstration shows, we are quickly reaching  
the time when anyone with a standard desktop PC can  
potentially pose a real threat to systems relying on such  
vulnerable security," said Jim Bidzos, president of RSA Data  
Security, Inc. "It has been widely known that 56-bit keys,  
such as those offered by the government's DES standard,  
offer only marginal protection against a committed adversary.  
We congratulate Distributed.Net and the EFF for their  
achievement in breaking DES in record-breaking time." 
 
As part of the contest, RSA awarded a $10,000 prize to the  
winners at a special ceremony held during the RSA  
Conference. The goal of this DES Challenge contest was not  
only to recover the secret key used to DES-encrypt a plain- 
text message, but to do so faster than previous winners in  
the series. As before, a cash prize was awarded for the first  
correct entry received. The amount of the prize was based on  
how quickly the key was recovered. 
 
"The diversity, volume and growth in participation that we  
have seen at Distributed.Net not only demonstrates the  
incredible power of distributed computing as a tool, but also  
underlines the fact that concern over cryptography controls is  
widespread," said David McNett, co-founder of  
Distributed.Net. 
 
"EFF believes strongly in providing the public and industry  
with reliable and honest evaluations of the security offered by  
DES. We hope the result of today's DES Cracker  
demonstration delivers a wake-up call to those who still  
believe DES offers adequate security," said John Gilmore,  
EFF co-founder and project leader. "The government's current  
encryption policies favoring DES risk the security of the  
national and world infrastructure." 
 
The Electronic Frontier Foundation began its investigation  
into DES cracking in 1997 to determine just how easily and  
cheaply a hardware-based DES Cracker (i.e., a code- 
breaking machine to crack the DES code) could be  
constructed. Less than one year later and for well under U.S.  
$250,000, the EFF, using its DES Cracker, entered and won  
the RSA DES Challenge II-2 competition in less than 3 days,  
proving that DES is not very secure and that such a machine  
is inexpensive to design and build. 
 
"Our combined worldwide team searched more than 240  
billion keys every second for nearly 23 hours before we found  
the right 56-bit key to decrypt the answer to the RSA  
Challenge, which was 'See you in Rome (second AES  
Conference, March 22-23, 1999)'," said Gilmore. The reason  
this message was chosen is that the Advanced Encryption  
Standard (AES) initiative proposes replacing DES using  
encryption keys of at least 128 bits. 
 
RSA's original DES Challenge was launched in January 1997  
with the aim of demonstrating that DES offers only marginal  
protection against a committed adversary. This was  
confirmed when a team led by Rocke Verser of Loveland,  
Colorado recovered the secret key in 96 days, winning DES  
Challenge I. Since that time, improved technology has made  
much faster exhaustive search efforts possible. In February  
1998, Distributed.Net won RSA's DES Challenge II-1 with a  
41-day effort, and in July, the Electronic Frontier Foundation  
(EFF) won RSA's DES Challenge II-2 when it cracked the  
DES message in 56 hours. 
 
http://www.rsa.com/pressbox/html/990119-1.html
                   
 
 
 
 
 
 
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edited by Harkank 
published on: 1999-01-19 
comments to office@quintessenz.at
                   
                  
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