A world-wide computer number-crunching contest caught the eye of University graduate Roman Gollent -- and now several current and former Penn students are participating in the project. The contest involves attempting to break the encryption code placed on text by the RSA Data Security company. Penn is currently ahead of national computing powerhouses Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics and Stanford University in the contest. "The goal is to prove that governmental encryption laws are too stringent and need to be relaxed," Engineering senior Blake Mills said. He explained that while encryption is an advanced data protection method, it is easy to understand the basics of the process when thinking of the childish tendency to write in code. In this more technical endeavor, however, a binary "key" is used in the encryption process. The key then acts like a password, and the encryption's security measures are further complicated by the addition of a mathematical formula. Gollent discovered the contest on the Internet, where he heard that the Rc5 48-bit key had been broken in Europe. He and a few others then decided to attempt the current 56-bit key challenge. "Penn was a logical choice as a starting point," Gollent said. "There are numerous machines available on which to run the client. ? Why not put them to good use?" Because the key is 56-bit, there are two to the 56th power possibilities that could satisfy the code -- a "huge number" to attack, noted Mills. The method the central computer uses to try to crack the code involves breaking up the block of numbers into smaller blocks and sending them to each of the participants over the Internet to be tested. The participant's computer then checks to see if the correct key lies anywhere within the remaining possibilities. The results are sent back to the central computer and another block of numbers -- if the key has not yet been discovered -- is distributed to other participants. The Penn team has been conducting a sizable amount of the experiment, testing between six and nine million keys per second of the 200 million keys being exhausted every second of the project. But more help is still needed, according to Gollent. "To reach the desired speed, we will need around 10,000 to 100,000 computers to participate [around the globe]," he said. "But given the fact that there are tens -- if not hundreds -- of millions of computers on the Internet, the figures start to look more acceptable." Though Mills said the contest has been going well, it has not been without problems. The server was dying on a regular basis only a few days ago, and there is still no source code available. But Mills said the effort is far from fruitless. "The company running the key server was slow to answer some of our questions and it took a few days to get everything in sync," Mills said. "However, we seem to have ironed everything out." Information about the project -- which has drawn national attention -- can be found on the Internet at http://zero.genx.net/, http://www.genx.net/stats.html and http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/97challenge/. Mills noted that anyone interested in the project is encouraged highly to become involved. He said he hopes the project will bring attention to the issue of cryptographic exportation laws. "I guess it's the geek equivalent of climbing a difficult mountain," Gollent said. "You do it because it's there, and you want to prove a point."
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