Parallel Algorithm Leads To Crypto Breakthrough 186
Hugh Pickens writes "Dr. Dobbs reports that a cracking algorithm using brute force methods can analyze the entire DES 56-bit keyspace with a throughput of over 280 billion keys per second, the highest-known benchmark speeds for 56-bit DES decryption and can accomplish a key recovery that would take years to perform on a PC, even with GPU acceleration, in less than three days using a single, hardware-accelerated server with a cluster of 176 FPGAs. The massively parallel algorithm iteratively decrypts fixed-size blocks of data to find keys that decrypt into ASCII numbers. Candidate keys that are found in this way can then be more thoroughly tested to determine which candidate key is correct." Update by timothy, 2010-01-29 19:05 GMT: Reader Stefan Baumgart writes to point out prior brute-force methods using reprogrammable chips, including Copacobana (PDF), have achieved even shorter cracking times for DES-56. See also this 2005 book review of Brute Force, about the EFF's distributed DES-breaking effort that succeeded in 1997 in cracking a DES-encrypted message.
"'This DES cracking algorithm demonstrates a practical, scalable approach to accelerated cryptography,' says David Hulton, an expert in code cracking and cryptography. 'Previous methods of acceleration using clustered CPUs show increasingly poor results due to non-linear power consumption and escalating system costs as more CPUs are added. Using FPGAs allows us to devote exactly the amount of silicon resources needed to meet performance and cost goals, without incurring significant parallel processing overhead.' Although 56-bit DES is now considered obsolete, having been replaced by newer and more secure Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption methods, DES continues to serve an important role in cryptographic research, and in the development and auditing of current and future block-based encryption algorithms."
Re:searching for ASCII (Score:4, Funny)
I'm safe (Score:1, Funny)
Moved to 57-bit DES years ago.
Re:searching for ASCII (Score:5, Funny)
Me, I let a Navaho code talker [xkcd.com] read out the bit stream before transmission.
Anyone else... (Score:3, Funny)
...reminded of the little box hidden in an answering machine in that movie Sneakers? lulz
Re:searching for ASCII (Score:4, Funny)
I rot-13 everything first, and then I go the extra mile and do it again, cause you can't be too sure
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, yes, his DES-cracking hardware is about 800x faster than a PC. Where's the "Crypto Breakthrough"?
He noticed the previous researcher's "sleep" statements.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, if we adhered to normal journalistic conventions, the headline would read something like "Man Causes Pig to Fly using Homemade Rocket".
Or if this were the New York Times, "In New Development, Swine's Aerial an Inspiration to All" and an editorial the next day, an editorial "Pigs Must Fly Farther, Higher", paired with "Opinionator: Will the Pig Land? Experts Divided. Join the Discussion."
(Then, on Monday, Krugman's "Why we Need Swine Flight Credits" and Ross Douthat's "When will This Liberal Pig Eat Your Children?")
Re:Practical value (Score:1, Funny)
They are both phallic symbols of patriarchal society?
Nobody has ever made a gun which has a big inwards hole where projectiles are received, QED.
Re:searching for ASCII (Score:4, Funny)
I do rot-6.5, but I do it four times.
Re:searching for ASCII (Score:4, Funny)
I rot-13 everything first, and then I go the extra mile and do it again, cause you can't be too sure
I do rot-6.5, but I do it four times.
You guys are both doing it wrong - wasting CPU cycles to get that additional security. I just do one pass with ROT-26.
Re:Too bad... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Interesting but not shocking (Score:3, Funny)
I wasn't personally involved in the decryption effort, so I naturally assumed it was probably some kind of scam carried out by a consortium of international security agencies, trying to convince us that all the encrypted pornography on our hard drives wasn't actually safe from outside scrutiny. Of course I could be wrong, so I covered myself both ways by inserting the qualifier "apparently". I'm a child of the 80's since you ask, but sadly at the time of the distributed.net decryption event I was limited to either an archaic 486 at home, or the "computers" at my college. I use speech marks as when an operating system is so bogged down in security software and access controls that word processing causes a lockdown (complete with flashing lights, armed guards and your name being entered onto a register for cyber-terrorists), the device it's running on pretty much ceases to be useful as a computational device.
Use with Care... ROT-26 for expert use only (Score:2, Funny)
ROT-26 has several interesting properties that make it unique among encryption algorithms,and only by knowing it's strengths and weaknesses can you decide if it is the right tool for your use case. For one, ROT-26 (and the entire ROT family of ciphers) are unique among encryption strategies in their heavy reliance on avoiding hostile interception altogether. Even if intercepted, like many of the latest stenographic or hidden volume techniques, a ROT-26 cyphertext nearly always succeeds at being completely unidentifiable as an encrypted document. It has, however, been singled out (fairly In my opinion) for being vulnerable to a trivial known-ciphertext attack that may be employed by any minimally literate expert. Although praised for it's universal hardware support and unbeatable performance (a constant time implementation of the algorithm has been discovered(!)), nonetheless, securing your data using ROT-26 is increasingly viewed as unwise.