Package: distributed-net (2.7018.401-1) [non-free]

donate unused CPU cycles - client for distributed.net

Donate your extra CPU cycles to a worthy cause!

RSA Data Security Inc. (holders of the patents on RC5 encryption - the most common public-key encryption algorithm around, and the leading cryptographic software company) is sponsoring a series of contests to "crack" messages encrypted with the RC5 and DES algorithms via brute force methods. The objective of this contest is to demonstrate that weak encryption is susceptible to brute-force attacks, either via large numbers of computers working together on the internet, or via specialized hardware.

This is important because various governments around the world (particularly the U.S. government) have laws restricting the length of encryption keys used in communication. In the U.S., these laws penalize U.S. companies (especially RSA) and threaten the privacy of individual citizens.

The distributed.net effort, which has already beat the rc5-56 challenge and the DES II challenge, is now working on rc5-64. By installing this package, unused CPU cycles on your computer will be used to work on cracking the code. There should be no noticeable slowdown of your system, since the client runs niced, and only uses CPU time when your computer would otherwise be idle.

For more information, see http://www.distributed.net/