Editing Distributed.net (section)

==History==
A coordinated effort was started in February 1997 by [[Earle Ady]] and [[Christopher G. Stach II]] of [[Yahoo! HotJobs|Hotjobs.com]] and New Media Labs, as an effort to break the RC5-56 portion of the [[RSA Secret-Key Challenge]], a 56-[[bit]] [[encryption]] algorithm that had a $10,000 [[United States Dollar|USD]] prize available to anyone who could find the [[key (cryptography)|key]].  Unfortunately, this initial effort had to be suspended as the result of [[SYN flood]] attacks by participants upon the server.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,2350,00.html|first=James|last=Glave|title=Macho Computing at Root of RSA Contest Flap|publisher=Wired|date=1997-03-03}}</ref>

A new independent effort, named distributed.net, was coordinated by Jeffrey A. Lawson, Adam L. Beberg, and David C. McNett along with several others who would serve on the board and operate infrastructure. By late March 1997 new proxies were released to resume RC5-56 and work began on enhanced clients. A [[Cattle|cow]] head was selected as the icon of the application and the project's mascot.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://faq.distributed.net/?file=80|title=What's with all the cows?|publisher=distributed.net}}</ref>

The RC5-56 challenge was solved on October 19, 1997, after 250 days. The correct key was "0x532B744CC20999" and the plaintext message read "The unknown message is: It's time to move to a longer key length".<ref name="distributed.net: Project RC5">{{Cite web|url=http://www.distributed.net/RC5|title=distributed.net: Project RC5|website=www.distributed.net|access-date=2019-04-23}}</ref>

The RC5-64 challenge was solved on July 14, 2002, after 1,757 days. The correct key was "0x63DE7DC154F4D039" and the plaintext message read "The unknown message is: Some things are better left unread".<ref name="distributed.net: Project RC5"/>

The search for [[Optimal Golomb Rulers]] (OGRs) of order 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28 were completed by distributed.net on 13 October 2004, 25 October 2008, 24 February 2009, 19 February 2014, and 23 November 2022 respectively.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://blogs.distributed.net/2004/11/01/10/24/nugget/|title=distributed.net: staff blogs – 2004 – November – 01|language=en-US|access-date=2019-04-23}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://blogs.distributed.net/2008/10/25/23/14/bovine/|title=distributed.net: staff blogs – 2008 – October – 25|language=en-US|access-date=2019-04-23}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://blogs.distributed.net/2009/02/24/17/26/bovine/|title=distributed.net: staff blogs – 2009 – February – 24|language=en-US|access-date=2019-04-23}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://blogs.distributed.net/2014/02/25/16/09/mikereed/|title=distributed.net: staff blogs – 2014 – February – 25|language=en-US|access-date=2019-04-23}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blogs.distributed.net/2022/11/23/03/28/bovine/|title=distributed.net: staff blogs – 2022 – November – 23|language=en-US|access-date=2022-12-29}}</ref>