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 distributed.net cracked the DES algorithm in RSA's second DES challenge.

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

DES-III RESULTS

The winning key to the challenge was detected and submitted to RSA Labs at 14:15 GMT on Tuesday, 19-Jan-1999.

The correct key, 92 2C 68 C4 7A EA DF F2, revealed the plaintext: "The unknown message is: See you in Rome (second AES conference, March 22-23, 1999)"

Project statistics:

        Start of contest:                       January 18, 1999 at 09:00 PST
        End of Contest:                         January 19, 1999 at 07:15 PST

        Size of keyspace:                       72,057,594,037,927,936
        Approximate keys tested:                16,017,142,616,948,736
        Percentage Checked:                     22%

        Overall Key Rate:                       199 billion keys/sec
        Peak Key Rate:                          250 billion keys/sec

Computing equivalents:

At this rate, if keys were dollars, you could pay off the entire US debt
twice every minute.

If keys were sheets of paper and you stacked the sheets up, the stack
would grow 1,530 miles (2,460 kilometers) every second.

If keys were drops of water our flow rate would be 9.52 million gallons
(35.7 million liters) per second. That rate could fill (or drain) lake
Erie in 136 days. 

During the course of the contest, we checked enough keys
to make a stack of paper 980 million miles (1,580 million kilometers) 
high, and would have flowed 605 billion gallons (2,290 billion liters),
enough to flood the city of Chicago to a depth of 12.7 feet. 

DES-III STATISTICS

UNB DES-III STATISTICS

Team UNB:

Current Ranking:         250
Total blocks to search:  134,217,728
Total blocks checked:    9577
Keyspace Exhausted:      0.007135%
Total keys checked:      5.14 Trillion
Time Working:            2 days
Overall Rate:            14,877.35 kkeys/sec

7,549 blocks were completed yesterday (0.00562444% of the keyspace)
at a sustained rate of 23,453.93 kkeys/sec!



Team/Email              Total   Member   Last     Days     Key Rate
                        Blocks  Since    Seen     Active   kkeys/sec

roland@omg.unb.ca        2316   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days    5284.82 
jeffg@cips.ca            1601   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days    3495.25 
g2d5@unb.ca              1406   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days    4125.95 
jeffg@nbnet.nb.ca        1005   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days    2752.71 
cam_macleod@ottawa.com    533   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days    1208.58 
skibum@unb.ca             520   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days    1165.08 
c000n@unb.ca              449   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days     854.40 
bcs@nbnet.nb.ca           386   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days     845.07 
labby@nbnet.nb.ca         364   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days     848.18 
cleblanc@unb.ca           351   19 Jan   19 Jan   1 days    1090.52 
pete.lepage@ottawa.com    280   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days     832.65 
c5gm@unb.ca               218   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days     599.63 
james@terhune.net         115   18 Jan   19 Jan   2 days     248.55 
bonzman99@aol.com          20   19 Jan   19 Jan   1 days      62.14 
z40u@unb.ca                13   19 Jan   19 Jan   1 days      40.39