Just because you said that, people WILL try to break it. It’s the Internet, dude.
This is FIRST. We teach Gracious Professionalism. Neither part of GP supports hacking the encryption. Unless, of course, you’re a CIA decrypter and are trying to break a terrorist’s code or something like that.
Its also FIRST. And as we’re constantly reminded, this is not about robots, but people.
Hiding in your basement, working to decrypt something a few days early, missing out on sleep more than is typical in FIRST, and missing out on people, only to gain information that might help build a superior robot helps the robot, not people. Engaging in a collective thought of “Oh…My…God…DAVE, WE’RE SUPPOSED TO DO WHAT AGAIN” with your team, and FIRSTers around the world, while on the same build schedule as everyone else helps people.
And it wouldn’t make any grandmother I know proud.
Can’t we just ban him or something this time of year?
Oh god… here we go again.
Can’t we have a year off from this madness? We never come anywhere near to what the game is…can’t we just forget it and wait until kickoff?
Where’s the fun in that?
True…true…excuse me while i scour the FIRST site and their information and try to find something.
How did we not see dave’s post coming?
OK just to clarify, i’m a rookie and i was just wondering why they release it early. I have no intentions to crack it or anything like that. I don’t even know how that’s possible if i wanted to.
Why are we so worried about this? We do not need GP from the teams to keep the manual safe from being viewed early. Have you seen the size of the key? I would argue that it is simply impossible with our current technology for anyone to crack this key in 3 days.
BTW - using any Lavery clue to figure anything out could be equally impossible.
Since I guess you missed it:
Since everyone triesto get the game right when it is released, FIRST releases it ahead of time encrypted so they can get the game out to everyone at the same time without complications of a crashed server and unhappy teams that can’t look up the rules to the game.
It is likely a moot point given the security of the key, but I don’t neccesarily agree with the concept that it is “not GP to try to break the key”… at least not in Canada… not yet.
First of all, it is clear that the GDC gives hints, however cryptic, to encourage speculation over the nature of the game. In the past, those hints have even included reference to the encryption code. If attempts to discover the nature of the game, or the encryption code, were frowned upon by the Game Design Committee, I can’t see why they would choose to encourage them with relevant hints. (Well, aside from the fact that it provides them with a brief interlude of humour before the onslaught of Q&A forums questions start pouring in.)
Secondly the encrypted manuals are released openly. Cracking the manuals does not require intrusive or damaging hacking.
Thirdly, if someone were to figure out how to crack a high security code of this nature in two days, that single achievement would outweigh every other technical innovation and development ever made as a result of FRC… combined. The commercial, political and mathematical impact would be pheonomonal.
However, I do have to add that it may be illegal (and thus non-GP behaviour) in the USA to attempt to crack the code due to the provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. I’m not familiar with all the provisions of the act, but do know that there are restrictions on the attempt (even a futile attempt?) to crack a code protecting a copyrighted work or distributing software to that end.
However DMCA does not apply in Canada (although our govenment is proposing something similar, but in some ways worse) or other parts of the world… so given that it is still legal to try to break a code in Canada, and the GDC actively encourages teams to try to figure out the nature of the game in advance of kick off – specifically integrating the password in to the hints – I’m not sure why it would inherently be non-GP behaviour for an individual or team not covered by DMCA to attempt to break the code.
It would spoil the fun of kickoff for those who knew the game in advance, but they would be too busy publishing in Nature, and/or explaining exactly what they did and how to their national security agencies to really worry about that. The FRC kickoff would receive more mass media attention than it ever has… likely FIRST and all FRC teams would benefit greatly from this kind of media attention.
Most likely those attempting to crack the code will learn a little about encryption and a lot about futility. But I don’t automatically assume that their actions would be either ungracious or unprofessional.
Jason
P.S. Ironically, perhaps, I would view an attempt to open a KOP case before kickoff in order to get a head start as non-GP behaviour… but no one encourages that, and it would require damaging part of the KOP.
Regarding Dave’s post: What if the encryption key is the same as a past year’s key? Anyone remember the 2004 code?
Even if a team was able to crack the encryption code, it would be thoroughly unfulfiling. It’d be like the preacher who played hooky from church one week to play a round of golf, and scored three consecutive aces. Sure, it’s a great achievement, but who could he tell?
I have discovered a truly marvellous method to crack this, which this margin is too narrow to contain. With apologies to Pierre.
If I actually was able to crack the code (not likely), I’d probably do it – but I’d be too polite to actually look. And if I opened up the KOP I wouldn’t know what was in there. Motors are motors, that’s about it. Except maybe the game piece. Well, if it was obviously a game piece. Some years they don’t supply a game piece. (And how about Stack Attack? Who would have thought the box was the game piece??) The only thing in there I know is in there – that’s the software CDs. Then again, they may be preshipped with the controllers.
Here is the 2006 “PDF Manual Code”: S1x240JrTBmsqf95DL06FdsTM33H
2008’s was Drive!Straight?turn!LEFT!? Which was obviously :rolleyes: easy if you mixed up the letters in the third hint Vet hurdling FIRST tetra.
Have at it.
Only problem is you didn’t have the exclamation marks (!) and questions marks (?) in between. Even if you did find the words, you’d still be stuck for a month guessing the order of the words and what is missing.
And I think that what Dave’s saying is that a hint’s coming up next week or at the start of November.
Anyone checked his MySpace/Facebook.
Oh, and try to search through bill’s blog.
Oh, great, now I’m stuck in it too…THANK YOU DAVE…
Maybe before I would have said trying to crack the code is against the rules, but Dave is asking for it now. Of course, the answer to his questions is almost certainly “no”, but given the success of last year’s hint I suspect the GDC will try something like that again…
I haven’t tried this to make sure, but I think this fits in your margin.
http://pdfcrack.sourceforge.net/
Do I win?
Nope, I don’t think so. It tries to crack the password using word lists and bruteforcing. Brute forcing a key that long would take about 10^20 years using a network of ~35,000-40,000 2GHz Athlon XP machines. Wordlists would likely not lower the time required enough even if words are used like last year, the key is too long and there are still a number of other characters in the key.
You’re welcome to try this tool when the encrypted sections come out (if they come out), but I don’t think you’ll get very far.
Good statistic! You could shrink that number significantly if you equipped those computers with Nvidia graphics cards and off boarded the computation to them. But still, there is no way we are going to get past the encryption. 10^18 or 10^17 years are still a lot and definitely not worth it.
I don’t remember how the PDF’s are encrypted (Probably the highest level), but the lowest level of encryption can be broken in a day or two.
That is a very rough calculation based on Distributed.net’s brute force crack of RC-64
I am fairly certain that they used AES encryption last year which is a minimum 128bit key. From what I can see all of the “PDFCrack” tools claim to be able to brute force 40 bit keys (not AES) in 2-4 days.