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 Forum index » Diversions » Perplex City Puzzle Cards » PXC: Silver Puzzle Cards
[PUZZLE] #251 - Silver - The Thirteenth Labour - READ POST#1
Moderators: AnthraX101, bagsbee, BrianEnigma, cassandra, Giskard, lhall, Mikeyj, myf, poozle, RobMagus, xnbomb
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themandotcom
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Joined: 28 Apr 2006
Posts: 136
Location: Syosset, New York, USA, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe
BriEnigma wrote:

If you have a second piece of text that was encoded with the same key as was used in 13th Labour, then go right ahead. Smile Most of the exploitable "flaws" (although maybe "properties" might be a better term) in cryptosystems are only exploitable when you have more than one ciphertext, more than one plaintext, you can choose the message(s) you want to encrypt, etc. When you are presented with only a single ciphertext message (and told the algorithm that was used), in most cases (and certainly in ours) your only option is brute force. That's what we are doing. Differential cryptanalysis would be a good path to follow if we had two messages encoded with the same key, but we don't.


My bad, just in wikipedia and in Applied Cryptography they made it sound like it can be done with anything. But hey worth a try right? If it did work, that'll be cool too. But thanks for the explination Bri!
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13th Labour!

PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 10:23 pm
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SteveC
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Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 381

 		I have a vague request. There is certain maintenance that needs to be done to the client. Although chimera, and others can certainly hack it together to do what we want/need, we could probably use the services of an IT literate combinatorial/permutational mathematician.

If you're in a university, go try to recruit one
If you're one yourself, contact us, I'll explain the problem.
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...and no, I didn't reverse engineer or bruteforce anything to form this opinion.

PostPosted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:05 am
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dragonscales
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Joined: 21 Aug 2006
Posts: 10
Location: Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK

 		25th August, 1:35

Why is 13thlabour.tk down? Why does it not exist?

EDIT: *Looks at above post and trouts self*

Ben
Very Happy

PostPosted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:36 am
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Macavity
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 883
Location: UNSC Comm Relay Station Alpha, West Shokan, NY

 		That reminds me, I recently sent a few feelers out into the hacking community to see if there were any brains I could pick about cracking Thirteenth Labour.

The first response I got a few weeks back from a chap who uses the handle DeThMeDiSn, and you can see it here.

The second response I got today, from someone who goes by the name of System X. His response was basically "I don't know much about RC5 personally (although it and Perplex City sound pretty interesting), but I think the guys on binrev.net might be able to help you out. Why not talk to them?"

So, I poked around to see what I could find out about binrev.net, and apparently it's the IRC network for Binary Revolution.

I think it might be worthwhile getting in touch with the folks over there - we might pick up a few useful tips.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:18 pm
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Guin
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Joined: 11 Jan 2006
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Location: Antartica

 		Just to let you know a new puzzle went up tonight Smile

Live Journal Puzzle

Up for grabs - A shiny SF event T-shirt
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So long and thanks for all the fish! Trout

PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 3:55 pm
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thedudewhoadude
Guest


 		config
Alright...I started up the client last night, somehow missing the bit in the readme that talks about how to throttle it. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, because setting it to 200,000 doesn't really seem to slow down my computer any. The config file only has two lines; on the second one, where it used to have the value of 0, I change it to 200000. Is there anything else I'm supposed to do? Can I raise it any higher? Any answers would be greatly appreciated from this n00b!

PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 1:32 am
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Mindez
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Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 165

 		I put it on 100000000 with no computer slowdown.

It just seems to use whatever free resources it can use, despite what I set in throttle...
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 3:34 am
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SteveC
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Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 381

 		Windows is quite good at multitasking these days Smile The best setting for the client is probably '0'
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 4:23 am
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Mindez
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Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 165

 		I just find it weird/funny (Delete where applicable) that BOTH my clients run faster when I have TWO running. Like, if I have 1 running, the average time will be 1:48, but if I have 2 running, it goes down to 1:30ish for each client (Meaning I'm working at 45 seconds per unit!!).

I just find it strange that putting more things to drain on my resources makes both faster.. Confused

Ah well, I'm not complaining.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 5:16 am
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Tarim
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Joined: 09 Feb 2006
Posts: 21
Location: Bristol, UK

 		The Next Stage
Warning, this is a long (and possibly boring) post containing Tarim's thoughts on the next stage of the 13th labour project.


--- Really Random Key? ---

In the olden days when people wanted to simulate a system - they might have used a Monte-Carlo method. This involved going to the library, getting a book of random numbers (yes, such things really did exist) and using these as the data for the simulation. A curious side effect was that a slight bias was sometimes forced into the simulation by the person looking up the random numbers. They would open a page at random, and if they noticed a "pattern", say "2 2 2", or a sequence like "4 5 6", they would discard the data and open the book somewhere else...

Based on distributed.net's cow icons appearing on the card - Tarim's guess is that the puzzle was always intended to be solved by a brute force approach. That being the case - Mind Candy would have generated a random key AND if that key had some pattern to it - would have discarded it and generated another one.

The point Tarim is making (in long-winded fashion) is that trying to test for keys with "patterns" in, may actually make the search longer.


--- Key Space ----

The input box on the answer page is big enough for an 8 character key - but looks a little small for the whole of the decrypted text. This, somewhat flimsy, evidence points to the key being made up of typeable characters, so the search can be limited to 95 characters rather than the full 256.

Unfortunately, at the current rate this will take around 10 years to exhaust the key space! If the key really has no humanly recognisable patterns in it then the only things to do about this are:

1) Increase the amount of computer power to attack the problem.
2) Use the computer power more efficiently.


--- Increasing the amount of computer power available ---

Obviously - there need to be more people involved in the project! But how to do this? One idea (and there have to be more) is to encourage people by awarding a small prize each time, say, 10,000,000 work units are completed. This keeps up people's interest and the more people take part - the quicker the prizes are awarded Wink


--- More efficient use of clients ---

Currently, it looks like the client runs a sequential process of:
1) Get a list of keys to check.
2) Check them.
3) Report on the results.

Instead, the client computer could try to check keys continuously. When it has a certain number of results, but still has some to go, it spawns a separate thread to report on the ones it's done and to request more while continuing to check keys in the main thread. If it runs out of keys - it picks some at random to check while it's waiting! It then reports the results in the usual way. When the client receives a new list it replaces the ones yet to be checked with the new list.


--- More efficient use of the server ---

Looking at the graph of progress - it shows a remarkably straight line since early June. This either indicates that the amount of client computer power has remained pretty constant - or that the server is bottlenecked (either through bandwidth or key allocation). It may be fine - but if the number of clients is to increase dramatically (as it should if the problem is going to be solved in less than 10 years) - then this problem needs to be addressed.

Having the clients continuously check keys helps - but is not the whole answer. The only suggestion Tarim can make here is to make the server/client system as configurable as possible. So the server should be able to reconfigure the clients responses as much as possible. Such things as:

* Number of keys processed before reporting results (independently of the number of keys given to the client to work on).
* Time-out delays before the client should try to report if it cannot get a response.
* Stub size for work units.
* Keyspace to check within in a work unit.
* IP address and channel to report on.
* Anything else which allows the whole system to be reconfigured as things change.



--- Final Thoughts ---

As ever, Tarim thanks everyone who has done all the hard graft on this project. You've probably thought far more about the problem than Tarim has - so apologies if a lot of this post is teaching grandmothers to suck eggs.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 3:28 pm
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Daffy889
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Joined: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 493
Location: South Australia

 		Re: The Next Stage
Tarim wrote:
The input box on the answer page is big enough for an 8 character key - but looks a little small for the whole of the decrypted text. This, somewhat flimsy, evidence points to the key being made up of typeable characters, so the search can be limited to 95 characters rather than the full 256.


I've always assumed that it would decrypt to a question or clue or something, and the answer to that would be what you type in.
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Perplex City Map

PostPosted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 12:14 pm
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SteveC
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Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 381

 		Re: The Next Stage
Tarim wrote:


--- Really Random Key? ---


If they've chosen a random key, we won't be solving it ever. It's simply too much space to search.

Tarim wrote:


--- Key Space ----
The input box on the answer page is big enough for an 8 character key -


My feeling, as above, is that it's an answer to a question or clue posed in the decrypted text (which will be in the region of 130-150 characters or so).

Tarim wrote:

how to do this? One idea (and there have to be more) is to encourage people by awarding a small prize each time, say, 10,000,000 work units are completed. This keeps up people's interest and the more people take part - the quicker the prizes are awarded Wink


Not a bad idea - and it would serve to deplete the seemingly ever expanding prize pool... Up to GuiN I think, he's fully in charge of that sort of thing Smile

Tarim wrote:

--- More efficient use of clients ---


There are lots of ways the client could be improved upon, you've hit upon some interesting ones. The motivation hasn't really been there though as it would require regular client updates, hard work, and would only marginally reduce the search time (which isn't huge as it stands anyway)

[/quote]

Tarim wrote:

--- More efficient use of the server ---


Yeah, the straight line effect you mention has always baffled me too. It's not a bottleneck as far as I understand it, but I have no idea why it's so damned linear.
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 12:57 pm
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mac_monkey
Decorated

Joined: 25 Feb 2006
Posts: 250

 		Re: The Next Stage
Tarim wrote:
Warning, this is a long (and possibly boring) post containing Tarim's thoughts on the next stage of the 13th labour project.


Hehe, Some nice thoughts there..

I love the way you refer to yourself in the 3rd person, it actually makes quite pleasant reading Smile

macmonkey should do that more often.
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 1:05 pm
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Furry Mark
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Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 30
Location: Cambridge, UK

 		Re: The Next Stage
SteveC wrote:
Tarim wrote:

how to do this? One idea (and there have to be more) is to encourage people by awarding a small prize each time, say, 10,000,000 work units are completed. This keeps up people's interest and the more people take part - the quicker the prizes are awarded Wink


Not a bad idea - and it would serve to deplete the seemingly ever expanding prize pool... Up to GuiN I think, he's fully in charge of that sort of thing Smile

Furry Mark can't see how this would work - what would the basis of the prize allocation be? Random (lucky dip) presumably?
Awarding a prize for each 1,000,000 WUs completed might work as an encouragement, but would favour the big hitters.
(Furry Mark checks his own total)
Hmmm... maybe the big hitters should be rewarded now and then... Rolling Eyes Twisted Evil
SteveC wrote:

Tarim wrote:

--- More efficient use of the server ---


Yeah, the straight line effect you mention has always baffled me too. It's not a bottleneck as far as I understand it, but I have no idea why it's so damned linear.

The real background number of active clients actually seems to be falling if you look at the graphs over the whole project Sad (you can see the true level when the long outstanding WUs get expired every couple of weeks)
Currently hovering around 700 clients.
On that basis the straight line seems reasonable... Confused

Furry Mark thinks we need to recruit more and/or improve the throughput per client.
Maybe we could all just get some new, faster computers? Shifty Eyes
(Looks around room and wonders about building another dual CPU PC...)

Furry Mark needs to get out more... Embarassed Mr. Green

PostPosted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:41 pm
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FranG
Boot

Joined: 23 May 2006
Posts: 35

 		Is everybody getting just 10 WUs at a time or did my client get stuck somehow when they were reduced a while back?

PostPosted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:15 pm
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