VV o n g B a
01-07-2003, 12:41 PM
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?...p?id=ns99993235 (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993235)
Effort to crack Xbox code abandoned
15:15 07 January 02
Will Knight
A scheme to crack the code used to authenticate official games for the Xbox games console has been abandoned for "legal concerns". But cryptography experts say the odds of succeeding were astronomical anyway, unless some shortcut could have been found.
A group known as The Neo Project recently proposed combining the distributed power of thousands of desktop machines in an effort to guess the master key. A software program was released to let desktop users contribute spare processing power towards the goal.
Obtaining the key would mean Xbox users could run any game on their console, or indeed any program at all.
But a message posted to the group's web site on Tuesday reads: "Due to legal reasons, we will no longer be hosting or participating in the Xbox challenge". No further information was provided.
Fruitless task
The Xbox key is generated using the RSA encryption algorithm and is 2048 bits long. Brian Gladman, an independent cryptography expert based in the UK, says the length of the key means there is an incredibly slim chance of finding it via brute force computing.
"It's a fruitless task unless there is some inherent weakness in the system, whether this is a failure in implementation or that a part of the key has been leaked," he told New Scientist.
According to RSA company, it would take a million Pentium 500MHz computers 100 billion (1011) years to run through all the possible solutions of a 1640-bit key. A 2048 bit key would be exponentially harder to crack.
Age of the Universe
Andrew Huang, a computer consultant who carried out a detailed analysis of Xbox security while studying at MIT in June 2002, agrees that the odds of succeeding would be extremely small.
"It's highly unlikely a 2048-bit RSA key will be guessed," he said. "I seem to remember factors greater than the age of the Universe, even taking into account Moore's law."
Xbox games must be signed with a "private key" held by Microsoft in order to run on Xbox machines. This key is mathematically linked to a "public key" which is stored inside each console. Together the keys confirm that the game comes from an authorised source. Because the two keys are linked, it is theoretically possible to derive the private key from the public one.
Effort to crack Xbox code abandoned
15:15 07 January 02
Will Knight
A scheme to crack the code used to authenticate official games for the Xbox games console has been abandoned for "legal concerns". But cryptography experts say the odds of succeeding were astronomical anyway, unless some shortcut could have been found.
A group known as The Neo Project recently proposed combining the distributed power of thousands of desktop machines in an effort to guess the master key. A software program was released to let desktop users contribute spare processing power towards the goal.
Obtaining the key would mean Xbox users could run any game on their console, or indeed any program at all.
But a message posted to the group's web site on Tuesday reads: "Due to legal reasons, we will no longer be hosting or participating in the Xbox challenge". No further information was provided.
Fruitless task
The Xbox key is generated using the RSA encryption algorithm and is 2048 bits long. Brian Gladman, an independent cryptography expert based in the UK, says the length of the key means there is an incredibly slim chance of finding it via brute force computing.
"It's a fruitless task unless there is some inherent weakness in the system, whether this is a failure in implementation or that a part of the key has been leaked," he told New Scientist.
According to RSA company, it would take a million Pentium 500MHz computers 100 billion (1011) years to run through all the possible solutions of a 1640-bit key. A 2048 bit key would be exponentially harder to crack.
Age of the Universe
Andrew Huang, a computer consultant who carried out a detailed analysis of Xbox security while studying at MIT in June 2002, agrees that the odds of succeeding would be extremely small.
"It's highly unlikely a 2048-bit RSA key will be guessed," he said. "I seem to remember factors greater than the age of the Universe, even taking into account Moore's law."
Xbox games must be signed with a "private key" held by Microsoft in order to run on Xbox machines. This key is mathematically linked to a "public key" which is stored inside each console. Together the keys confirm that the game comes from an authorised source. Because the two keys are linked, it is theoretically possible to derive the private key from the public one.