The UNB Crytography Group helped in the international effort to crack the DES encryption algorithm. Using a large number of computers working together in a distributed computing system, and using a brute force attack (trying all possible keys), the deschall team cracked the DES algorithm publicly for the first time ever.

If you are interesting in getting more information about the DES challenge click here.

DES RESULTS

Tens of thousands of computers, all across the U.S. and Canada, linked together via the Internet in an unprecedented cooperative supercomputing effort to decrypt a message encoded with the government-endorsed Data Encryption Standard (DES).

Responding to a challenge, including a prize of $10,000, offered by RSA Data Security, Inc, the DESCHALL effort successfully decoded RSADSI's secret message.

Using a technique called "brute-force", computers participating in the challenge simply began trying every possible decryption key. There are over 72 quadrillion keys (72,057,594,037,927,936). At the time the winning key was reported to RSADSI, the DESCHALL effort had searched almost 25% of the total. At its peak, the DESCHALL effort was testing 7 billion keys per second.

RSADSI's secret message: "Strong cryptography makes the world a safer place."

Project statistics:

  Start of contest:                  January 29, 1997
  Announcement of DESCHALL project:  February 18, 1997
  End of contest:                    June 17, 1997

  Size of keyspace:  72,057,594,037,927,936
  Keys searched:     17,731,502,968,143,872
  Peak keys/day:        601,296,394,518,528
  Peak keys/second:           7,000,000,000 (approx)

  Peak clients/day:                  14,000 (approx, based on IP address)
  Total clients, since start:        78,000 (approx, based on IP address)

The computer that found the key:

  CPU:                  Pentium 90
  RAM:                  16 megabytes
  Operating System:     FreeBSD 2.2.1
  Speed (keys/second):  250,000 (approx)
  Client:               FreeBSD v0.214, built March 12, 1997
  Owner:                iNetZ Corporation, Salt Lake City, Utah
  Operator:             Michael K. Sanders

DES STATISTICS

TEAM UNB STATISTICS