Talk:distributed.net

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Cryptography: Computer science Low‑importance

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Explain the project better

After reading this article, I still have no clue what projects distributed.net does. It uses a lot of terms and jargon that I am not familiar with. Are these math problems, or encryption problems? I have no idea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.225.34.167 (talk) 20:07, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize that no editor answered your valid question in over a year. My understanding is that these problems are all simple procedures to test random keys for their being the correct solution to significant specific cryptographic encodings of plain text. This is called a "brute force" method of problem-solving, because it uses processing power instead of advanced problem-domain mathematical analysis to solve the problems. I believe these were chosen as first steps toward being able to solve important and more interesting classes of problems through distributed programming. I agree with your implied criticism that WP is inconsistent in sometimes writing for the general public and sometimes for experts in a particular field of knowledge. David Spector (talk) 17:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All the RC5 projects are brute-force attacks on a specific encrypted message, meaning they check every mathematically possible key until the correct answer which decrypts that specific message is found. The CSC projects were similar to RC5. The OGR projects are different and are not related to encryption; they seek to prove that a certain arrangement of marks, called a Golomb ruler, is the optimal arrangement for a ruler of a given length. Information on the specific projects is available on distributed.net's website, but a summary of projects that they have worked on, for the layman, would be a welcome addition to this article. ZebeFirst (talk) 21:36, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]