[2197] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: The secret message is...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Amanda Walker)
Thu Feb 26 10:11:49 1998
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 09:55:32 -0500 (EST)
From: Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com>
To: chipper@llamas.net
Cc: cryptography@c2.net, dee@cybercash.com, markham@securecomputing.com,
ptrei@securitydynamics.com, rsmith@securecomputing.com
> The discussion seems somewhat unknowing of the methods used to brute force
> the DES key for this contest. Please visit http://www.distributed.net to
> get an idea of how we accomplished this.
I'm pretty familiar with distributed.net's effort. I was observing
that it is now econimically feasible for a private entity to build a
distributed DES cracker of similar capability out of mass market
hardware, thanks in part to your own success at developing good
software that runs on stock hardware in a distributed environment.
> Actually, the MAC code ended up being the most optimized of all the
> platforms in the contest.
Oh, I'm a PPC fan myself. It's just possible to pack a lot more PCs
into a given amount of rack space. It's a density (keys/sec/cm^2)
question, not a per-CPU speed question.
Amanda Walker
