Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

For those of who still think its worth it to try and find the password here are sum numbers to crunch.

I got these results from trying the test document.
Computer:
Dual Athlon MPs 1800+ 1.53GHz processors
PC2100 DDR ECC Reg. 512MB
Windows XP Pro

Software:
*Name of software used will be posted after the official kickoff password is given.

Stats:
The method used was Brute-Force with the following set of charactors [A-Z] [a-z] [0-9] with a range 1-15 charactors long.

14,000 passwords per secound average

781,514,782,079,074,318,856,775,914 Possiable Passwords

692,872,793,493,106,442,870,877,008 Passwords before "2004DecryptTest"


In other words for those of you that have bothered to read this far it would take several years just to figure out "2004DecryptTest".

Some more numbers to crunch for you. 62 the number of charactors per chractor length, with the total lenth of 15

62 nPr 15

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

Actually I would have to agree with Clark Gilbert regarding the "appropriateness" (is that a word?) of this entire thread. As I am sure the manual is "copyrighted material" and FIRST obviously does not intend for the information to be distributed before Saturday at kickoff.

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

Heh stupid DMCA.

Honestly, does this thread really look like a serious attempt at cracking the rules? No, its a discussion of the security of RC4 and PDF. Have you seen one person post saying they are tryign to crack the thing? I think not. Really, come on now, if you don't agree with this thread then don't waste your time posting in it.

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

For me, one of the best moments of the build season is that rush you get sitting there waiting for them to reveal the game :). If anyone cracks it, don't tell me.

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

Alright guys, 128 bit encryption is totally secure, at least given the time we have, so stop even discussing the possibilities of cracking it. If anyone actually even tries, in my eyes, that is a disgrace to everyone who participates in FIRST. yeah, most of you probably are joking, but why even joke?

:confused:

Cory

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

If everyone agreed with each other, it would be a very boring place.
Last year there were threads about weather or not collusion was good or bad,
but no one said that if you didn't agree that you shouldn't speak up.

*fails to finds words to express the validity of opposing views/thoughts*

Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~
Variety is the spice of life.

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

Whoa. That sounds suspiciously like the standard excuse that virtually every serious hacker has used over the years - even when committing blatantly illegal acts. "It was just an intellectual challenge - I didn't mean to do anything wrong" is no excuse for breaking the rules or violating the law. Joking or not, I think you are trying to walk a very tight line with that attitude.

In our society we have come to accept "I didn't mean to" excuses as a rationale for irresponsible behavior. Some famous sports figures have refined it to an art form. Pete Rose bets on baseball, in full, knowledgeable violation of the rules of the league, and then basically says "I didn't really hurt anyone, and besides I am so good at the game that I deserve to be in the Hall of Fame anyway." And a whole lot of baseball fans say he is right! Mike Tyson bites off Evander Holyfield's ear, and uses the excuse "I just got caught up in the moment - twice." He admits on national TV that he hit his wife hard enough to throw her across the room, calling it "the best punch I ever threw." But it is OK "because she made me mad," and nothing happens. The governor of Texas gives his OK to pay amateur players at SMU because "it would be good for the state" - despite the fact that it was blatantly illegal. Clem Haskins has his staff write literally hundreds of papers for his basketball players to submit as their own work at the University of Minnesota, and then obscenely refuses to admit that there was anything wrong with the practice, as if the very concept of "plagiarism" didn't even exist.

Somehow we have come to think that wonderful performance ON the field justifies bestial behavior OFF the field. But at some point, you have to stand up and say "wait a minute - you guys are all adults, and you all know better. You want to be treated like grown-ups (and paid grown-up salaries), then you better start behaving like grown-ups. YOU are responsible for your own behavior, and no one else. If you screw up, then YOU are the one at fault. And just saying 'I didn't mean to' doesn't cut it any more."

So why do I care at all about this? Because the quote above says that, on OUR playfield - the environment of the FIRST competition and the community of teams that define the FIRST culture - some may think that it is OK to bend or break the rules, as long as it is covered by the "I'm not trying to break the law, I was just curious" rubric. I am only speaking for myself, but I do not think that is acceptable behavior. I am not satisfied with the attitudes that society finds acceptable. I believe that the best way to change those attitudes is to change society. And one of the best ways to do that is to raise the standards of "acceptability" and then live by them. I would hope that within THIS community, we are trying to do that.

[/end soapbox]

-dave

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

This is going to change the subject a bit but it's the first thing that I thought of after reading this. I should start off by saying that I completely agree with you. My main concern is that FIRST itself doesn't really seem to follow such guidelines. Except, in FIRST case, it's okay to break the rules because the teams spent time designing and building the component. There were major incidents of FIRST allowing teams to overrule FIRST's initial judgements simply by being stuburn occuring in 2002 and there was at least one incident I'm aware of last year.

Consider this a bit of a request to FIRST to hold the community to a high level of standards as far as following the rules of the competition go.

Matt

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

Well, Dave, while I agree that breaking rules is bad, the simple fact that FIRST wants us to be creative in our decisions and robots sometimes requires us to find loop-holes in the rules. Now, I'm not saying totally illegal stuff, but I mean like the teather idea in 2002. Simply put Dave, I think this whole discussion has gotten out of controll. More hurt feelings and bad reputations will come from this than any more discussion.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=23313

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

I posted this in another thread, but I feel like I should repeat it in here. If moderators want to delete this double message, feel free to do so. :-)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Curiosity is a good thing. It drive people to use their imagination and problem solving skills. But do that justify what you are trying to find out? Well, it depends. It is great that you have good intentions, in this case, trying to learn something. But sometimes good intention isn't good enough. History told us a lot of people had great intentions when they wanted to do something, but their action were not approved by everyone else because of the consequences of those actions, not because they had good intentions.

In order words, a lot of times the rest of your action determines if you are doing something right or wrong. In this case, if you are trying to crack the pdf files FIRST released ahead of time even though they do not wish anyone to read them before the game is revealed, then you violated their trust. It doesn't matter if you keep it a secret and never say anything about it. You are the one who have to live with your action, and its consequences. If FIRST found out and stop providing the pdfs ahead of time in the future, then your action (that you thought was harmless) affected everyone else in the FIRST community. If FIRST never found out? Well, then you will have to live with it the rest of your life. You can probably brag to your friends what you've accomplished, and some may or may not approve.

You may or may not agree with FIRST in releasing these files ahead of time. What's done is done. The important point is FIRST trusted everyone to wait until Saturday morning. What you do with that trust is up to you.


Like JosephM said, this topic is probably beaten to death. Chances are, FIRST will think twice about it next year. No need to argue what's right or wrong. At the end, all of you is responsible for your own action. It is time like this when you test out who you truely are. I just hope you don't find something you dislike about yourself.


Let's take a break, go get yourself a cup of hot tea (or whatever suits you), sit in front of the fire place or TV, and relax :-). You are about to approach insanity in the next few months. Enjoy your sanity while you can.

Perceptions matter...
 

Here is YET ANOTHER reason why this thread is a bad idea:

Perceptions MATTER!

I believe that FIRST has used a good encryption scheme -- good enough that noboby will get to the data before it is worthless to get to.

I understand that, but my MOM wouldn't (unless she asked her son).

My Mom would think, "Hey, I don't know anything about this whole encryption business, but here are these hacker guys saying they can crack the code in minutes, they are probably wrong, but they just might be right, I can't tell."

This is a reasonable thing for a lot of people to think -- even people associated with FIRST who are more techinically savy than my Mom, but still don't appreciate the implications of the difficulty of factoring large integers.

If enough people believe that FIRST's secrecy has been compromised and that the game is fixed or rigged or whatever, this is not good for FIRST.

In the absense of more reasonable folks (Dave Lavery, et. al.) telling people the real deal, I honestly believe that FIRST's reputation would have been damaged by all this talk of how easy it will be to crack the code.

Bottom line: FIRST is really important to me (and a lot of others) and we don't like it when WE have to take steps to do "damage control" so that THEY can "entertain" themselves.

Joe J.

I have to defend my student
 

Dave L,

After reading your post reacting to Swando's post, I had the same reaction as you. I was a bit upset and since we have our team meeting today;Mr. Swando (yes, Swando is his last name), a 3 year veteran on our team, and I were going to have a little discussion.

However,

I read his previous post (post #13, I think) and subsequent posts and I think his statement was taken a little out of context. His previous post makes it clear were he stands on the "spirit of FIRST" issue. His post you reacted to was a poor attempt to disagree regarding the rules of this forum. The Forum rules clearly state you can't post about anything illegal and Mike was arguing that this discussion should be allowed based on the fact that cracking the FIRST code is not illegal. Editorial note: while I think it is not a good idea to try to crack the code because it is in no way GP, I do not think it is illegal in this instance; but I could be wrong.

I agree that I do not like this discussion very much, but the bottom line in my post is to defend my student Mike Swando.

-Paul

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

if you do not heed any of the advice in this thread and decide to hack the password, dont make any info public. For the sake of you, your team, and the thread that holds first together, that would be 1000000000x worse than any thing you could ever say on these boards.

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

I got some comments, and just wanted to clairify my posts.

I support the right to DISCUSS about how to go about solving the code and the methods used to encrypt it.

I do NOT support the actuall cracking of the documents.


Wetzel

Re: The Manuall will be cracked in...
 

people are taking this thread way to seriously.

before we inflict an absolute moral code on all the FIRST students, I wonder... what would Dean Kamen do?

ask Dean sometime about how his company got started, a little bending of the rules at a place called The Museum of Natural History in Manhatten.

Ask him about the time he send his parents away on vacation (while he was a teenager) and what he did to his parents house while they were away! (or borrow a copy of the book "Code Name Ginger" and read the first chapter.

to hack open the PDF files before saturday, you would have to be a genius. The real issue here is, IF you were able to open them, what would you do with them before saturday?

I dont see anyone here advocating hacking the files to get an unfair advantage over other teams - what I see is the natural curiosity that all geeks and nerdy people possess - put a challenge infront of them, and the gears start spinning - nobody can stop those gears from spinning

Fortunately!

we will have a much greater and important challenge infront of us on saturday, and all this will be forgotten. But if by some chance someone does have the ability to decode the files before saturday, NSA and the FBI will both have standing job offers for you. :c)