★ wanayoo — archive 1999 http://www.distributed.net/history.html

distributed.net History

January 28, 1997
RC5-32/12/7 (56-bit) Secret Key Challenge begins
February 1997
Coordinated effort lead by Earle Ady of New Media Laboratories (genx.net) gains momentum. code release for a handful of platforms and keyrate peaks at an amazing 500 MKeys/sec at times. linux@linuxnet.org is the lead team by a wide margin.
February 26, 1997
In response to massive SYN flood attacks, New Media Laboratories is forced to withdraw their client binaries from distribution. New UDP-based clients are promised by the end of the week.
March, 1997
A small group of "regulars" begins meeting in the efnet irc channel #rc5 to discuss the project and express their frustration at the genx.net server.
New Media keyserver becomes unreliable, disappearing for days at a time.
Jeff "Bovine" Lawson begins working on a proxy buffer system to allow people to continue to run the client, cracking keys even while the genx server was offline.
What will eventually become distributed.net begins its RC5 attack in co-operation with genx.net 9128 blocks are completed the first day, for a rate of 28.36 Mkey/s. Time to exhaust keyspace: 80.6 years. Key assignment is completely random and completed work is not tracked (just buffered for eventual submission to the genx.net server)
March 18, 1997
genx.net keyserver disappears completely and will never reappear
March 24, 1997
Earle Ady is finally reached (Nugget called him at work) and confirms that the genx effort will not continue.
The first 'distributed.net' proxy network is made public. Bovine's proxy is converted and actually begins to orderly assign keys and track checked keys.
Five keyservers were in operation, run by Jeff Lawson (Bovine), Adam L. Beberg (Duncan), Peter Gildea (PetrDoubt), David McNett (Nugget), Chris Chiapusio (EA), and Peter DeNitto (AldE)
Tim Charron (TimC) releases his first optimized version of the client built from the genx (v1) code.
April, 1997
Several of the keyserver operators begin developing their own stats databases. No global stats are available
April 6, 1997
This division of prize money is agreed upon.
April 17, 1997
Our first web-server goes online. RC5-56 daily keyrate breaks 100 Mk/s for the first time, 0.1% completed, 22.1 years to exhaust keyspace (at current daily rate).
May 8, 1997 - distributed.net domain debuts
'distributed.net' is registered with InterNIC and goes online.
Project-wide DuncanStats debut.
May 18, 1997
RC5-56 percent of keyspace completed: 1.03%, 370.25 Mk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at current rate: 6.1 years.
June 8, 1997
RC5-56 percent of keyspace completed: 2.03%, 420.35 Mk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at current rate: 5.3 years.
June 17, 1997
DES I is broken by Rocke Verser's Deschall effort.
June 19, 1997
RC5-56 keyrate breaks 500 Mk/s for the first time.
June 20, 1997
V3 clients announced for the first time. Stats switched to an hourly update schedule.
June 25, 1997
RC5-56 daily keyrate breaks 1 Gk/s for the first time, 3.25% of the keyspace is completed. Estimated time to exhaust keyspace at current rate: 2.1 years.
July 8, 1997
The first stable v2 client is released, v2.002. Among the features:

- Buffering of up to 50 blocks
- Menu configuration
- Mid-block suspend on kill signals (HUP, ctrl-C etc)
- Percentage done reporting
- More accurate benchmarks
- Extensive self-test
- 20-50% faster on x86, ?% faster on PPC
- automatic proxy hunting if a proxy goes down.
- reporting of CPU and OS types
- more power :)
July 14, 1997
RC5-56 percent of keyspace completed: 5.13%, 1261 Mk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at current rate: 1.7 years.
July 23, 1997
RC5-56 daily keyrate breaks 2 Gk/s for the first time, 6.97% completed.
August 3, 1997
RC5-56 percent of keyspace completed: 10.06%, 2.477 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at current rate: 10 months.
August 16, 1997
RC5-56 daily keyrate breaks 3 Gkey/sec for the first time, 14.13% completed.
September 2, 1997
The first user created banners are made available for linking.
RC5-56 percent of keyspace completed: 20.51%, 3.3 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at current rate: 201 days.
September 9, 1997
Keymaster now requires more bandwidth than 128K ISDN can provide.
September 21, 1997
RC5-56 percent of keyspace completed: 30.29%, 4.6 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at current rate: 125 days.
September 29, 1997
RC5-56 daily keyrate breaks 5 Gk/s for the first time, 34.67% completed.
October 8, 1997
RC5-56 percent of keyspace completed: 40.17% 5.08 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at current rate: 98 days.
October 22, 1997 - RC5-56 Finished
RC5-56 is cracked after 212 days. Percent of keyspace completed: 47.03%, 5.3 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at current rate: 83 days.
RC5-64 is started. On the first day, 152799 blocks were checked at a rate of 475 Mkeys/sec. Time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 1,235 years.
October 27, 1997
distributed.net is granted a charter as a not-for-profit corporation in the state of Alabama under the official name of Distributed Computing Technologies, Inc.
November 13, 1997
RC5-64 daily keyrate breaks 5 Gk/s, 0.017% completed, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 104.5 years.
November 16, 1997
Stats database is moved to Best.net.
November 28, 1997
RC5-64 percent of keyspace completed: 0.10%, 8.4 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 69.5 years.
December 1, 1997
A check for $8,000 (from the RC5-56 win) is presented to Project Gutenberg.
December 18, 1997
distributed.net announces its intention to participate in DES-II-1.
December 4, 1997
RC5-64 daily keyrate breaks 10 Gk/s, 0.127% completed, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 57 years.
December 30, 1997
RC5-64 percent of keyspace completed: 0.20%, 10.3 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 56.7 years.
December 30, 1997
The first 'State of the Net' address is posted.
January 9, 1998
RC5-64 percent of keyspace completed: 0.30%, 11.3 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 50.6 years.
January 13, 1998
The first dual core DES/RC5 clients are made available as the DES-II-1 contest starts.
February 15, 1998
Over 65% of the DESII-1 keyspace is completed and block reissuing has begun. The 'State of the Net' address is posted in English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and French, marking the first official multi-lingual information from distributed.net.
February 23, 1998 - DES-II-1 Finished
DES-II-1 falls. Percent of keyspace completed: 88.4%, 28.1 Gk/s daily rate.
March 5, 1998
distributed.net rolls out regional support with 29 representatives serving 29 countries.
March 5, 1998
RC5-64 percent of keyspace completed: 0.50%, 11.7 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 49.9 years.
May 19, 1998
RC5-64 percent of keyspace completed: 1.00%, 17.0 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 34.1 years.
June 8, 1998
RC5-64 daily keyrate breaks 20 Gk/s, 1.18% completed, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 29.5 years.
June 15, 1998
A 'client' aimed at improving our DES cores is released. This S-BOX project didn't use the existing distributed.net network, but it was the first distributed attempt at improving the speed of one of the main project clients.
June 27, 1998
The long awaited 2.71 clients are released in preparation for DES-II-2. They offer faster DES cores and better contest switching.
July 10, 1998
We check our 1 billionth RC5-64 block.
July 11, 1998
The new keymaster goes online, sporting a K6-300, 128meg SDRAM, 4.5GB UWSCSI, 1.2 GB USCSI, 6.4GB IDE, and running FreeBSD 2.2.6-STABLE. The machine booted and began serving keys without incident and ran without reboot or failure for nearly 200 days.
July 14, 1998
StatsboxII also sees 'first light' as Nugget fires up the dual PII-300, 12+G SCSI box.
July 13, 1998
DES-II-2 starts.
July 17, 1998
DES-II-2 is over. The key was found by the Electronic Frontier Foundation using $250,000 worth of custom hardware.
July 29, 1998
We begin the search for a new logo, announcing a logo design contest.
August 3, 1998
RC5-64 daily keyrate breaks 30 Gk/s, 1.78% completed, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 18.5 years.
August 18, 1998
Our first eyegive check shows up for $4,271.06. Build .418 clients launched.
August 19, 1998
RC5-64 percent of keyspace completed: 2.03%, 30.6 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 18.77 years.
September 9, 1998
We start running stats through a custom http cache for the first time, greatly improving response times. BovineOne will eventually turn the 'cowcache' into an Apache module.
The keymaster is now using more bandwidth than a T1(1.544 Mbps) could provide.
September 14, 1998
We formally announce OGR as our next contest and Rayden242 as the winner of our logo design contest.
October 14, 1998
We check our 2 billionth block.
October 19, 1998
RC5-64 percent of keyspace completed: 3.01%, 40.5 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 14.05 years.
November 17, 1998
We're officially recognized as a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization by the IRS.
November 30, 1998
RC5-64 daily keyrate breaks 50Gk/s, 3.87% completed, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 11.08 years.
December 22, 1998
We check our 3 billionth block.
January 3, 1999
Our first ever test contest begins, in preparation for DES-III. This was the first large-scale test of our 'quick switch' clients, and was a resounding sucess. It was followed by a second test contest January 12.
January 8, 1999
Keymaster has an uptime of over half a year, but is taken down to replace the 1 gig keylog volume with a 9 gig UWSCSI disk and add another 128meg SDRAM dimm.
January 18, 1999
RSA's DES Challenge III begins
January 19, 1999
distributed.net and EFF solve the DES-III challenge in a record 22 hours, 15 minutes, 4 seconds.
January 23, 1999
RC5-64 percent of keyspace completed: 5.01%, 50.2 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 11.09 years.
February 15, 1999
Statsbox I is finally retired after over a year of service from the Pentium200 machine.
March 23, 1999
Our bug tracker, based on Mozilla's Bugzilla bug tracker makes it's debut.
April 15, 1999
We check our 5 billionth block.
April 15, 1999
Adam Beberg steps down as president to work on Cosm.
July 6, 1999
RC5-64 percent of keyspace completed: 10.03%, 73.92 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 7.13 years.
Thanks to the generosity of Team Earth Rocket (#98), the lucky person who completed the 10% block received some nice steaks from Omaha Steaks.
Our mission statement is announced.
August 13, 1999
The first official DCTI staff gathering gets underway a bit early. Read more about it here.
September 27, 1999
RC5-64 daily keyrate breaks 100Gk/s, 13.20% completed, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 4.93 years.
October 27, 1999
We check our 10 billionth block.
November 17, 1999
The CSC contest is launched. On the first day, 382650 blocks, or 0.14% of the keyspace is done at an average rate of 1.2Gk/s.
November 27, 1999
CSC daily keyrate breaks 10Gk/s, 9.75% completed, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 75 days.
December 5, 1999
CSC percent of keyspace completed: 21.53%, 12.8 Gk/s average rate, estimated time to exhaust keyspace at this rate: 51 days.
January 15, 2000
CSC contest completed.