I’ve noticed that the 2014 encrypted competition manual is not yet up at http://frc-manual.usfirst.org/. I know it’s probably a bit early to look a full 10 days before kickoff, but when is the encrypted manual expected to appear?
Thanks,
Rick
FRC 3008 mentor
The last three years (at least), it’s been posted on the Wednesday before kickoff. Since the Wednesday is a holiday this year, I would expect it sometime that week, probably no earlier then Monday the 30th and no later then Thursday the 2nd.
Thank you! There’s a lot of anticipation this year in Hawaii with my new team. I’ll look for it then.
I think they might release it tomorrow, as a Christmas Present 
Something tells me they’re still making changes to the manual.
They’ve had to adjust for everyone in the game hint thread figuring everything out… :rolleyes:
Usually, when the GDC is confident that the password can’t be brute forced within the remaining time until kickoff. 
I thought the consensus was that they released a random hint and built a game around the funniest proposals in the game hint thread. :rolleyes:
I can’t wait till they give the manual and then the password on kickoff so I can unlock the file and find out about the game (on kickoff). By the way, is the file a locked PDF or a locked ZIP folder containing the files, or a zip folder containing the PDFs, each locked, maybe with their own passwords?!?
The file has always been one big PDF encrypted with a single password. This lets you put the PDF on a tablet, iPad, etc. in advance of Kickoff and punch in the password when you get there.
Expect it next week, not today.
In previous years they gave out an encrypted PDF file. I always wonder why they bother with the test file before. It seems to me that most FRC people have a computer with adobe acrobat, and that the FIRST people are good enough to encrypt a PDF file.
There are way, way more devices and programs that read PDFs than computers running Windows with Adobe Acrobat installed. The decryption test lets you verify that your Linux or Mac computer, your Android tablet, your iPhone or iPad, or whatever you’ll be using on Kickoff day definitely works. At least for me it’s very much appreciated.
As a linux user without an iPhone/iPad/Android tablet, I never thought about it that way, and I now see how it’s useful.
Sorry, but you’re a year off, and that manual happens to be available without encryption, and with a full set of updates and Q&Ahere. You’ll just have to wait another week or so for the 2014 one.
Actually, it’s against forum rules.
I will simply say this: 128-bit encryption, or something like it–and the password’s a 20-30 character string. NOT crackable by brute force in the time we’ve got. The general consensus the last few times this was brought up is that if you actually succeed, go straight to the CIA with the successful crack and apply for a job.
True. Also, I don’t have the materials to do so either! Intel’s lowest i3, 2367 is what I work on. I deleted that last post because I don’t want to encourage anyone to try that ;). But, since this can reside on an HDD, just use an SSD and state-of-the-are tech and you could possibly get it.
in short:
DONT WASTE YOUR TIME, BEING THE ONE DECRYPTING THE MANUAL, UNLESS YOU WANT TO SHELL OUT A TON OF MONEY AND RUIN THE 2014 KICKOFF FOR YOURSELF!!!
(I think that needed Caps :D)
Nice try. ANY character that can be typed is fair game. 2008’s password had not one but 4 punctuation marks. Nobody got it and the letters had already been given (though not all were in the right capitalization, and none were in the right order). And the password might just be a random sequence of letters and numbers–they’ve done that before, too.
One does not brute force using ‘Intel’, at least not for another several years.
The rainbow table (fastest way to brute-force something) for a typical FIRST-generated password is potentially (96^20) entries long. (96 types of characters, roughly 20 characters in length). Divide that by 2,800,000,000 and you’ll get how many seconds even the fastest ASIC processors can do it in.
You have much to read and learn, grasshoppa.
That’s not assuming it’s AES encrypted, which wouldn’t surprise me if they did. Brute force is never an efficient way of breaking any modern encryption.