Tuesday, 5/20/97 UCLA students participate in computer
encryption contest TECHNOLOGY: Groups in U.S., Canada aim to crack
government code
By Jennifer Mukai Daily Bruin Contributor Thousands of Internet
users across the U.S. and Canada are banding together to pick a
single electronic lock. They have a point to prove to the U.S.
government, and $10,000 to gain if they succeed in cracking the
code. In answer to RSA Data Security, Inc.’s "Secret-Key
Challenge," a group of universities, businesses and other
organizations are working night and day to crack the key to the
56-bit data encryption standard (DES) currently endorsed by the
U.S. government. Known collectively as "DESCHALL," the U.S.-Canada
team is the largest of several in North America competing in the
"DES Challenge" contest. Almost 10,000 computers are already
participating under the DESCHALL group. DESCHALL members are
working together to win RSA’s offered prize of $10,000 to the first
person to crack the key. RSA is trying to demonstrate through
"brute force" that the 56-bit government standard is not
sufficiently secure. Cryptography is used to safeguard privacy of
electronic data, ranging from personal e-mail to corporate
financial records. Since key length determines how difficult it is
to crack encrypted data, RSA and other encryption vendors hope to
convince the government to raise the 56-bit standard. First-year
computer science and engineering student Rudy Junus led UCLA into
the contest in mid-March, and quickly recruited several neighbors
from Dykstra Hall’s sixth floor to join the effort. By April,
UCLA’s Computer Science Undergraduate Association (CSUA) had
separately discovered the DES Challenge, and was also taking part.
An informal rivalry has developed among universities. Pennsylvania
State, Carnegie-Mellon University, Georgia Tech, the University of
Illinois at Urbana Champaign and MIT are currently leading the
pack. As of Monday, UCLA ranked 20th among DESCHALL participants,
with Junus’s Pentium 133 only one of 134 machines working to crack
the DES key. UCLA alone is checking millions of keys per day. With
over 72 quadrillion possible combinations to cover, however, the
entire DESCHALL group is only about 8.2 percent of the way through
its search. The correct cryptographic key has been likened to a
needle in a haystack "2.5 miles wide and one mile high" by Matt
Curtin, chief scientist at Megasoft Online, Inc. Curtin emphasized
that general-purpose computers like Junus’ are the backbone of
DESCHALL’s effort to prove the 56-bit key can be cracked "without
cost." "The vast majority of the computers involved aren’t huge
(supercomputers) only to be found in the labs and homes of geeks
like me," said Curtin, "but regular, everyday desktop computers
like Macintoshes, Windows-based Pentiums and 486s." With $100,000,
DES-specific hardware could be built capable of cracking DES keys
in mere minutes, Curtin added. Instead, the DES software runs in
the background on ordinary computers, "using computing cycles that
would have been otherwise spent drawing screensavers, or nothing at
all," he said. A major group based in Sweden, called SolNet, is
DESCHALL’s major competition. According to Curtin, SolNet now has
nearly double the number of active participants, but DESCHALL is
still ahead, thanks to faster client software. Rocke Verser,
creator of the original DESCHALL software, first established the
DESCHALL group in February. His software is now available for a
number of platforms, including Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2, Unix
and the Macintosh. Verser, a software consultant and contract
programmer in Loveland, Colo., wants 60 percent of the RSA prize
money, but is leaving the other $4,000 to whoever actually cracks
the 56-bit key. Verser observed that, money aside, there are
"probably almost as many reasons for participating in this
challenge as there are participants." "Some are participating
because this is a historic effort in the field of cryptography …
Some are participating as a show of support for relaxed export
regulations. Some are participating because this may be the largest
non-military computational effort in history. And some are
participating just because they say it is ‘cool,’" he said. As for
himself, Verser said that he, like many others, is motivated by a
combination of those reasons. Ilya Haykinson, the first-year
computer science student coordinating CSUA’s participation, is
attempting to spread awareness of the DES Challenge. He has
recruited the help of the School of Engineering’s network staff,
and is currently seeking help from the staff of the College Library
Instructional Computing Commons at Powell Library. Haykinson said
he is pushing for more Bruin participation to reaffirm UCLA as a
major contender in the computing world. "I feel that somehow UCLA
has lost recognition as a school with a good computer science
department," he commented. "It would be extremely exciting to see
UCLA win and prove we’re alive and kicking." Junus expressed
similar motives for participating. "Cracking the code gives proof
that what is believed to be the most secure and efficient
encryption method is not as powerful as what people think it is,"
he said. "And of course, it also gives us a little boost of
self-esteem I like to call pride!"