FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 17th 1999
The Amiga RC5 Team effort takes on DES III challenge
Starting Monday the 18th at 17:00 GMT, The Amiga RC5 Team effort enters the fray to find the key to a secret message encrypted with a 56 bit strong DES key in an ongoing series of distributed computing contests and challenges.
The goal of these challenges is manifold: to bring exposure to the Amiga by coming out in a top 10 place in a ranked contest, to expose the weaknesses of current encryption technology, to explore avenues of distributed computing and to offer Amiga users a worthwhile cause to band together for, perhaps to win part of the prize money as well.
The team has been working on other challenges in the past year and a half and will return to working on RC5-64 after DES III is completed. The DES III contest carries a time limited award, US $10,000 if the key is found within 24 hours, US $5000 if it is found within 48 hours, US $1000 if found within 56 hours and no award after that.
In order to find the correct key to the secret message a large number of computers works together over the Internet by running a special client program which uses only idle CPU time so as not to impede normal use, each connecting to a central network to fetch a part of the problem, work on it and flush it back once done with that part.
The Amiga RC5 Team effort is one of the largest teams with over 3000 machines and 1700 people participating, we are currently ranked 6th overall out of thousands of teams in the ongoing RC5-64 challenge.
Everyone is cordially invited to join and support us for the upcoming DES III challenge and RC5-64 (and others) after that. For more information on how to do this and everything from statistics to member listings, see the effort homepage at http://distributed.amiga.org. You can enter with any kind of machine or machines, though one Amiga at least is appreciated.
The Amiga RC5 Team effort is also providing a mailinglist as a forum for the discussion on above topics and the effort in general.
For additional info on how to participate and more in depth explanation, please visit the Amiga RC5 Team effort homepage at: http://distributed.amiga.org
Sincerely,
Amiga RC5 Team effort coordinator
Thomas Tavoly - rc5(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.xs4all.nl
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