RC5 Team
Since April 1999, Viking MUD has run a team on distributed.net, cracking RC5-72 keyblocks on spare CPU cycles around the world. Twenty-six years later, the clients are still running.
The Project
The Bovine RC5-72 Project is run by distributed.net and tackles contests associated with RSA Data Security's Secret Key Challenge. The idea is simple: a 72-bit RC5 key is too large for any single computer to brute-force in a reasonable time, but split across thousands of volunteers running a small background client, the keyspace shrinks fast.
Viking MUD joined in April 1999 and has been contributing blocks ever since. The client runs quietly in the background, using otherwise idle CPU time, and reports results back to distributed.net's servers.
The Prize
RSA Labs offered a USD 10 000 prize to the first person, group, or organization to find the correct RC5-72 key. Because participants submit through distributed.net, distributed.net becomes the winning entity and distributes the money as follows:
If a Viking MUD team member finds the winning key, the team's share goes to the MUD as a whole — server upgrades and the like — not to any individual.
How to Join
- Download the client for your platform from distributed.net/download. It runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and several others.
- Configure the client following the documentation bundled with the download.
-
Set the e-mail address to
rc5@vikingmud.org when prompted for
the sender address for RC5 packages. This assigns your blocks to the
Viking MUD team.
Note: using this address forfeits the individual USD 1 000 finder's share to Viking MUD, raising the team's potential winnings to USD 2 000. If you want to keep your individual share, register your own distributed.net account and join team 13165 manually.
- Start the client. It will run in the background, fetching keyblocks, testing them, and submitting results to distributed.net automatically.
- Check the stats whenever you like.