RSA: Big Showing For Digital Certificates.

A challenge that used to take 96 days of heavy duty computing -- cracking the U.S. government_s 56-bit Data Encryption Standard -- was met in less than a day, thanks to a supercomputer created by linking PCs over the Internet.RSA Data Security Inc., a supplier of data encryption and authentication software, has issued the challenge four times to illustrate that the government_s recommended standard for exportable security is too weak."We are quickly reaching the time when anyone with a standard desktop PC can pose a real threat to systems relying on such vulnerable security," said J. Bidzos, president of RSA Data Security, at the company_s annual security conference here Wednesday.That said, it took nearly 100,000 PCs linked over the Internet to find the key that unlocked the encrypted message, "See you in Rome (second AES Conference, March 22-23, 1999)." AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard, or one that employs up to 128 bits in the encryption process, greatly complicating the effort to crack the code. The successful effort to decode the message was lead by John Gilmore, founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation. The foundation offered its network of nearly 100,000 PCs, functioning as a supercomputer over the Internet, to a coalition of computer enthusiasts known as Distributed.Net. By trying possible combinations of encryption keys, which are used to unravel the scrambled code of encrypted messages, Distributed.Net found the correct key in 22 hours and 15 minutes. Gilmore and Distributed.Net received a $10,000 prize for their efforts from RSA Data Security, a subsidiary of Security Dynamics.