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The Bovine RC5-64 Project is a project of distributed.net.
It was formed in March of 1997 to tackle contests associated with RSA Data
Security, Inc.'s Secret Key Challenge. Through distributed.net
the Bovine Project provides and maintains the software and network infrastructure required
to distribute RC5-64 keyblocks to participating computers all over the world.The task involves testing (at most) 2^64 (18,446,744,073,709,551,616) keys
to find the one that properly decrypts the contest message. This is a monumental
undertaking that will require an enormous amount of computing power to succeed. Bovine
participants from all over the internet provide that power in the form of spare CPU cycles
on their own personal computers. Together they have helped to make the Bovine Project the
largest and most powerful distributed computer on Earth!
There are lots of reasons why people are doing this, its
fun, its challenging, you can win money, and probably a lot more, the most popular ones
are listed here.
If you find this interesting you can read the whole story
and reason at distributed.net. Here you will also
find more info about the project, coming project and the people behind the projects. |
