Welcome to the
Tri-Cities
RC5
Community Cracking Effort
Home Page

Over 140 computers strong and growing!
Want to see how we're doing? Check the latest team stats HERE!


Who We Are:
We are a loosely organized band of people from the Tri-Cities area of Washington State working hard to make a major contribution to the Bovine RC5/56 Encryption Cracking Effort.

Our Goals:

Get lives

Become popular

Win the lottery and blow the money on frivolous techno-toys

Replace Dave as co-host on Oddville, MTV

Got Cheesy Poofs?

Our Obtainable Goals:

Have Some Fun

Contribute to a large, internet based, distributed computing project

Compete against other teams doing the same thing

Have Some Fun

Become one of Bovine's Top 50 All Time Contributors

Stay ahead of the POP RC5 team (rc5@pop.k-net.dk)

Learn something about cryptography

Have Some Fun

What is RC5?:
RC5 is a relatively new data encryption algorithm developed by Ron Rivist for RSA Data Security, Inc. (RC5 is purported to be short for "Ron's Code #5" -- I guess anything is possible). It is a fast, single-key, symmetric block cipher intended as a possible replacement for the DES (Data Encryption Standard) algorithm(s) currently used by the federal government. (DES was originally developed by IBM and adopted as an official government standard in 1976). RC5 has several advantages over DES not the least of which is the ability to use larger key sizes. A "key", in this case, is basically a password. The larger the key is allowed to be the harder it is to guess what the password is. Key size is expressed as the number of binary bits a computer needs to store the key. DES uses 56-bit keys (you might think of this as a password with 9 characters). RC5 comes in different "strengths". The strongest version uses 255-bit keys (or approximately a 42 character password).

Want to learn the nitty-gritty details of RC5? Then check out these links:
RC5 White paper by Ron Rivist
RFC 2040: The RC5, RC5-CBC, RC5-CBC-Pad, and RC5-CTS Algorithms

Want to find out more about cryptography in general? Then run out and get your hands on a copy of "Applied Cryptography (2nd Edition)" by Bruce Schneier. Failing that check out some of these links:
Introduction to Cryptography I
Introduction to Cryptography II
Yahoo's Computers and Internet: Security and Encryption section
Ray Kopsa's Cryptography links
EFA's Cryptography page
Another good list of links


Who or What is Bovine?:
RSA Data Security is sponsoring a number of contests in which they challenge all comers to try and decode secret messages that they've encrypted using DES and 12 different strengths of RC5. The DES, RC5/40, and RC5/48 contests are already finished. Most of the current effort is going toward winning the RC5/56 contest. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you are) there is no known method to easily break the RC5 encryption algorithm. People are thus reduced to simply trying EVERY POSSIBLE key (or password) that exists. With a 56-bit key that translates into over 72 QUADRILLION different possibilities! A typical home computer would take over 10,000 years to test all of them so clearly this is not a feasible strategy. Or is it? Meet Bovine. Bovine is an organizing group which has developed a way to split the password checking workload among many, many different computers connected to the internet. Anyone who has a computer that is occassionally connected to the internet (say once a week or more) and wants to volunteer some of their computer's resources can participate in the program. Visit Bovine's web page for full details or see below.


Wow! You Guys are Cool!
How Can I Join the Tri-Cities Team?:
I'm glad you asked! It's easy! Just follow these steps.

1) Download the appropriate Bovine/RC5 client software for your machine from the Bovine web site mentioned above. Win95/NT, MacOS, Amiga, Linux, Solaris and many other operating systems are supported. (Note: Be sure to get the version 2 software -- It's the best supported and the fastest).

2) Read the Frequently Asked Questions list on the Bovine site (it's pretty short but it's pretty comprehensive).

3) When configuring your client software to run for the first time set your reporting e-mail address to "chubbard@owt.com". This is necessary because Bovine organizes teams by e-mail address. Using "chubbard@owt.com" is how you join the Tri-Cities team.

4) Run the client and welcome aboard!



Think This is Interesting?
Check out what CNN had to say about internet distributed computing!


Got Questions or Comments?:
Send them to Charlie Hubbard (chubbard@owt.com).