Press Release and Background Sheet

FORMAL PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release				Contact: David McNett
October 22,1997						 205-458-8208

SECURE ENCRYPTION CHALLENGED BY INTERNET-LINKED COMPUTERS

CHICAGO, IL (October 22, 1997) In what could be called the largest 
distributed-computing effort ever, tens of thousands of computers 
linked across the Internet, under the leadership of distributed.net, 
decrypted a message encoded with RSA Labs' 56-bit RC5 encryption 
algorithm.  Considered by many experts to be a sufficient level of 
encryption, this feat has cast grave doubts in the minds of analysts 
as to the level of encryption required to keep private data secure.  
"Our effort has shown that it is dangerous to consider any 56-bit key 
secure", says David McNett, one of the primary coordinators of this 
distributed supercomputing project.

The distributed.net effort to decrypt the encoded message required 
massive computing power, harnessed by utilizing the idle, or otherwise 
unused computing power from ordinary office and home computers. 
Combined, these machines managed to evaluate 47% of the keyspace, or 
34 quadrillion keys, before finding the winning key.  At the close of 
the contest there were over 4000 active teams processing over 7 
billion keys each second at a combined computing power equivalent to 
more than 26 thousand high-end personal computers.  The work was 
performed entirely using consumer PCs during off-hours or otherwise 
idle time.  Add them all together, however, and you have the world's 
largest computer.

The winning key was found by Peter Stuer, working for the STARLab 
Bovine Team coordinated by Jo Hermans and centered in the Computer 
Science Department (DINF) of the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, 
Belgium.

Of the US$10000 prize from RSA Labs, Mr. Stuer will receive US$1000.  
US$8000 is being donated to Project Gutenberg, a non-profit 
organization created for the purpose of converting the classics of 
literature into electronic format for the unlimited public use.  The 
remaining US$1000 is being retained by distributed.net to assist in 
funding future projects.

Distributed.net is the brainchild of Adam L. Beberg.  It is the 
largest non-profit venture focused on developing the full potential of 
distributed computing.  Its purpose is to utilize the Internet, 
allowing home and office computer users to join forces in tackling 
great and seemingly insurmountable computational challenges.  The net 
result is computing power sufficient to challenge the dominance of 
even the most expensive mainframes and research computers.

Information about distributed.net is available from the official 
distributed.net web site at: http://www.distributed.net/

MEDIA CONTACTS:
    David McNett, Voice: (205) 458-8208, Fax: (205) 458-8206 
    nugget@distributed.net

ALTERNATE:
    Adam L. Beberg, (708) 396-9532, beberg@distributed.net


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SECURE ENCRYPTION CHALLENGED BY INTERNET-LINKED COMPUTERS
Background for release dated October 22, 1997

distributed.net data sheet

distributed.net web site:
    http://www.distributed.net/

Related sites:
    Project Gutenberg: http://www.promo.net/pg/
    RSA Labs: http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/
    RSA Secret Key Challenge: http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/97challenge/

Principal organizers:
    Adam L. Beberg, Software Engineer,
        Chicago, Illinois
    Jeff Lawson, Junior Computer Science Major, Harvey Mudd College,
        Claremont, California
    David McNett, Computer Programmer/Network Administrator,
        Birmingham, Alabama

Project statistics:
    Start of contest:                     January 28, 1997
    Start of distributed.net effort:      March 20, 1997
    End of contest:                       October 19, 1997
	
    Size of keyspace:                     72,057,594,037,927,936
    Number of "blocks":                   268,435,456
    Number of keys in one "block":        268,435,456
    Peak keys/day:                        600,246,644,113,408
    Peak keys/second:                     7,200,000,000 (estimated)

The unencrypted message:  "It's time to move to a longer key length"

Computing equivalents:

    Distributed.net is equivalent in processing power to:

    14,685 Intel Pentium Pro 200 processors
    13,362 Motorola PowerPC 604e/200 processors
    116,326 Intel 486DX2/66 processors
    58,163 Intel Pentium 133 processors

Perspective:
    distributed.net could compromise 46-bit RC5 in under one hour.

    If you printed a single page to represent each key block as it was 
    checked and placed those pages in a stack, it would grow 6.24 inches 
    taller every minute.

    If keys were drops of water, the flow rate would be 464428 litres per 
    second.

    If Keys were dollars, we could pay off the U.S. National Debt in 12.44 
    minutes.

    If keys were bytes, we could fill 290268 3 1/2" floppy diskettes every 
    minute

    If keys were drops of water, the flow rate would be 122609 gallons per 
    second.

    If Key Blocks were hamburgers, we could feed the entire city of 
    Phoenix, AZ lunch each day

The computer that found the key:
    CPU:              Intel Pentium Pro 200
    RAM:              128 megabytes
    Operating System: Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0
    Owner:            Vrije Universiteit, Brussels, Belgium
    Operator:         Peter Stuer 
    More information: http://dinf.vub.ac.be/bovine.html/

MEDIA CONTACTS:
    David McNett, Voice: (205) 458-8208, Fax: (205) 458-8206 
    nugget@distributed.net

ALTERNATE:
    Adam L. Beberg, (708) 396-9532, beberg@distributed.net