DistributedDesBreaker

Attempts a brute force attack on a DES encrypted file using distributed computing

Main Components of the project:

• Local Solver
  • Takes a starting point and tries multiple keys up to an upper bound
  • Needs to be as efficient as possible
  • Makes use of the DES library
• Problem Space
  • The DES key is 64 bits in the DES encrpytion scheme the solver uses
  • DES keys are actually 56 bits, but the above scheme uses 8 bits of parity to make the key more resistant to brute-force attacks
  • Need a way to quickly process only valid keys to limit the amount of redundant key checking
• Distributed Implementation
  • Uses WorkQueue with a pool of Condor workers
  • Idea is to dispatch tasks that cover a portion of the key space to increase the throughput of keys per second processed.
  • Tasks will be submitted in the form "./solver (plainblock) (cipherblock) (starting key) (number of iterations)".
    • (plainblock) is an 8-byte argument on the command line that corresponds to the chunk of plaintext being processed.
    • (cipherblock) is an 8-byte argument on the command line that corresponds to the plaintext chunk that has been encrypted and is being processed.
    • (starting key) is the starting value to check for the key at.
    • (number of iterations) is the number of subsequent keys to process starting at (starting key).