| From: | Wordman <wordman@*******.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | [OT] Call to Join the Shadowrun Bovine team |
| Date: | Fri, 20 Nov 1998 00:25:13 -0500 |
Shadowrun enthusiasts!
1) What is Project Bovine?
Project Bovine is an effort organized by distributed.net to crack a message
encrypted with the RC5 algorithm using a 64-bit key. The idea is to get
thousands of personal computers to try all possible key combinations during
times when they would otherwise be idle. Joining involves running software
on your computer that unobtrusively uses idle CPU cycles, and periodically
communicates progress to central servers as distributed.net.
The Bovine client runs on about every modern platform and OS you can think
of.
More information about Project Bovine can be found at:
http://www.distributed.net/rc5/
2) What is the Dead Deckers Society?
Bovine lists statistics of how many keys everyone has processed. They allow
groups of people to lump their efforts together as a team. Teams are formed
for a number of reasons, mostly to show support for one thing or another.
For example, the team that has currently processed the most keys (by a very
large margin) is a Macintosh advocacy group.
The Dead Deckers Society (in this context, at least) is a team made up of
people who enjoy Shadowrun.
3) How do I join?
First, download the client and start cracking keys. The following page
should tell you all you need to know about downloading, setting up and
running your client: http://www.distributed.net/FAQ/stepbystep.html
Once you are up and running, you can join the Dead Deckers Society. You need
to know that the id number for the team is 9106. The following page will
tell you how to use this number to join the team:
http://www.distributed.net/FAQ/team.html
4) What's in it for me?
Apart from the thrill of being a part of what distributed.net calls "the
worlds fastest computer", the illicit thrill of cracking secret messages and
the knowledge that you will be using the Internet in a way never attempted
on such a scale before, there is a cash reward for finding the correct key.
The inventors of RC5 (RSA systems) have offered a $10,000 reward to the
project that first deciphers the message, by any means. Distributed.net, who
is coordinating the thousands of people involved in Project Bovine, will
divide this prize money as follows:
$1000 to the person who actually finds the correct key
$1000 to that person's team
$2000 to distributed.net for building the network and supplying the code
$6000 to a non-profit organization, decided by vote. Each key you test is a
single "vote".
Should a member of the Dead Deckers Society find the key, the reward given
to the team will be given to the individual who found the key. This is
preferable to inventing some arcane method of dividing the money among the
participants, and will be much easier to carry out.
5) What else can I do?
Once you are up on running on one machine, try to get up an running on more.
Above all... recruit! The more people that join us, the better.
Wordman
