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Old 1st March 2007, 09:34   #42  |  Link
BlazingMind
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 19
Quote:
Originally Posted by ffguy View Post
I am not a crypto expert by any means, just an interested programmer.
Given enough of the keys, one could theoretically figure out the master key used to generate them all by guess-and-check, correct? It wouldn't be fast, but it could be theoretically done.
I ask because I have several computers with nothing to do. By splitting the potential solution space into many many parts, people like me with too much time on their hands could start chipping away at the problem. Divide the solution space and start handing out slots, if not to find the key than to verify where it is not.
I'm afraid the algorithms are too slow to do a brute force attack if we don't have a shortcut.

If you remember distributed.nets DES attack, it took ages to get anywhere, and that was with a fast algorithm and a tiny key (in comparison).

I'm not skilled enough with the underlying crypto to write this in assembler, but if anyone would be interested in joining forces, we might be to write highly optimized assembler code to attack these algos. This will help a little, but I fear it will still be an "impossible" task due to the nature of the algos.

Even if we managed to get 1 000 000 checks/second on an average computer (about the same speed as highly optimized MD5 brute force attacks run at today), we would still need 10 000 000 000 computers for 1 079 028 307 080 601 years to check all keys in the keyspace.

In other words... With Moores Law, we can't expect to do an effective brute force on such a key during the next 32 years, and it would still take 10 000 000 000 computers and 3-4 months.

ps. don't shoot me if it turns out that I've miscalculated this slightly, I'm not used to working with large numbers like these ;-)
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