RC5
RC5
If you haven't read about distributed.net and the RC5 cracking effort, see their web page for background info.
I was home with the flu recently, so I took the opportunity to hack on RC5 and Java, just to see what kind of keyrate I could squeeze out of a language doing something it wasn't designed to do.
I put together a sample applet that cracks keys and reports the results. When you hit the "Go!" button, this applet starts a thread that cracks keys for about 30 seconds and then stops. Depending on your browser and OS platform, you may or may not see live updates while the key cracker is working.
(Note: Although this is doing RC5-32/12/8 (64-bit key), you won't find the "winning" key for two reasons: This program uses data from the RSA test contests, not the real thing; and it always checks the same range of keys.)
Performance numbers will vary wildly depending on CPU, OS, and Java VM. Update! Marc Sissom suggested an optimization that improves the results about 8% with Netscape and a whopping 82% with Internet Explorer! Here are the results for my computers:
CPU Speed OS Java VM keys/sec (v1) keys/sec (v2) ---------- ------- ------ --------------------- ------------- ------------- Pentium II 300 MHz NT 4.0 Sun JDK (W32 PP)* 182,000 197,000 Pentium II 300 MHz NT 4.0 Internet Explorer 4.0 90,000 164,000 Pentium 120 MHz NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 44,700 Pentium 120 MHz NT 4.0 Internet Explorer 4.0 16,500 i486 66 MHz NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 14,300 Pentium II 300 MHz NT 4.0 Sun JDK 5,200 Pentium 120 MHz NT 4.0 HotJava 1.0 2,900 i486 66 MHz NT 4.0 Internet Explorer 4.0 2,850 Pentium 90 MHz Linux Sun JDK 2,300 Pentium 90 MHz Linux Netscape 4.03 760
Others have written with their performance numbers:
CPU Speed OS Java VM keys/sec ------------ -------------- -------------- ---------------------- -------- Pentium II 300 MHz (dual) Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 183,000 Pentium II 266 MHz Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 157,000 Pentium Pro 233 MHz (oc) Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.01 137,000 Pentium Pro 233 MHz (oc) Windows NT 4.0 Sun JDK (W32 PP)* 133,000 AMD K6 200 MHz (oc) Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 120,000 AMD K6 200 MHz Windows 95 Netscape 4.03 118,000 Pentium Pro 200 MHz Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 116,000 Pentium Pro 166 MHz (oc) Windows 95 Netscape 4.03 91,300 Pentium 240 MHz (oc) Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 90,500 Pentium II 300 MHz (dual) Windows NT 4.0 Internet Explorer 4.0 81,000 Pentium 200 MHz Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 76,000 Cyrix 6x86 166 MHz Windows 95 Netscape 4.03 74,700 Cyrix 6x86 166 MHz Windows 95 Symantec 67,400 Pentium 166 MHz Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 65,300 AMD K6 233 MHz Windows 95 Internet Explorer 4.0 60,200 AMD K6 200 MHz Windows 95 Internet Explorer 4.0 52,700 Pentium Pro 200 MHz Windows NT 4.0 Internet Explorer 3.02 52,000 Pentium 133 MHz Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.0 51,500 Pentium 166 MHz Windows 95 Netscape 4.0 44,700 Pentium 100 MHz Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.03 37,800 Pentium 240 MHz (oc) Windows NT 4.0 Internet Explorer 4.0 33,300 Pentium 166 MHz Windows NT 4.0 Internet Explorer 4.0 31,700 Cyrix 6x86 133 MHz Windows 95 Internet Explorer 3.02 27,500 UltraSPARC 167 MHz Solaris 2.6 Sun JDK 20,300 Pentium 150 MHz Windows 95 Internet Explorer 3.02 19,000 Cyrix 6x86 133 MHz Windows 95 Netscape 3.03 11,700 Pentium 150 MHz Windows 95 Netscape 3.01fr 9,350 Pentium 133 MHz OS/2 Warp 4 Netscape 2.02 8,250 PowerPC 604e 200 MHz MacOS Netscape 4.03 6,200 Pentium II 300 MHz Linux Sun JDK 5,200 Pentium Pro 233 MHz (oc) Windows NT 4.0 Sun JDK 3,900 PowerPC 180 MHz MacOS Internet Explorer 4.0 3,200 Pentium II 300 MHz Linux Netscape 4.03 2,300 PowerPC 604e 200 MHz MacOS Runtime for Java 1.5 2,150 Cyrix 6x86 166 MHz Windows 95 Sun JDK 2,000 PowerPC 604e 100 MHz MacOS Netscape 4.03 1,750 Pentium II 266 MHz Linux Netscape 4.03 1,600 68040 40 MHz MacOS 8 Runtime for Java 1.5.1 1,380 Pentium 133 MHz Linux Netscape 4.03 1,080 Mips R4400 200 MHz (SGI Indigo2) Netscape 3.01S 1,050 UltraSPARC 167 MHz Solaris 2.6 Netscape 4.03 1,050 PowerPC 601 120 MHz MacOS 7.5.5 Netscape 3.01 920 SPARC 5 110 MHz Solaris Netscape 4.03 587 68040 40 MHz MacOS 8 Netscape 3.01 26 (*) W32 PP is the Win32 Performance Pack available with the Sun JDK 1.1.4.
You can download the source code if you want to have a look. The source zip also contains the .class files, so if you would like to try RC5demo from the command line, just run:
java RC5demo
(Substitute the name of your Java interpreter if you're not using the Sun JDK.) This will crack keys for about 30 seconds and report the results to the console.