FC: Neo Project apparently resumes work on hacking Microsoft's Xbox

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

----- Forwarded message from Eric Cordian <emc () artifact psychedelic net> -----

From: Eric Cordian <emc () artifact psychedelic net>
Subject: It's Baaaaaaaaaaaaack
To: cypherpunks
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 10:25:51 -0800 (PST)

Seems the folks at www.theneoproject.com have decided to continue work on
factoring Microsoft's Xbox public RSA key.

It's unlikely their "random prime attack" will amount to anything.  
Nonetheless, it's good to have examples of perfectly legal reverse
engineering to counter all the DMCA hype.

We will close with the following exerpt from this news story, as covered
by VNU Net, a British publisher.

http://www.vnunet.com/News/1137916

  "The Neo Project began at the start of this year to try to crack
   Microsoft's private RSA-576 key by using a distributed computing
   network.

   This move followed RSA Security's original RSA-576 Factoring
   Challenge, posted last July, which offered crackers $10,000 to break
   the encryption algorithm.

   After successfully meeting RSA's challenge this week and publishing
   the factors on the internet, Neo Project announced that it would focus
   on Microsoft's implementation of the algorithm used for digital rights
   management in its Xbox console."

Oh my. 

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

----- End forwarded message -----



-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------