So by now some of you have no doubt heard that the manual will be avalible Thursday Night on the First site in Encrypted form. (RC-128) Here is my question how long will it take for some industrious FIRSTers to break into it?? 
I could probable secure a beowulf cluster for the effort.
wouldnt it be great if the manual was encoded in such a way that, there were more than one keys that would give you readable output
bot only one would give you the correct output
so a team might hack the manual and THINK they can read it - but what they are reading is all wrong?
B-E-A-utiful ! 
But I am wondering why only 8 of 12 sections are being released. If there is a security concern then why release anything? Otherwise why not release it all ? Also, the timing stinks - I will be traveling to KO on Thursday evening, as I suspect most of the other attendees will also. Anyone know if SNHU has a wireless network?
I think the reason for only having 8 of 12 sections on Thursday is because what is the purpose of encoding parts of the manual that are not relavent at all to the game this year. Meaning the part for scholarships and such. Just a guess here, as is everything else at this point⌠
I never thought of that ⌠good point!
That actually makes sense - which is why it probably is NOT the ârightâ answer ⌠(sorry Iâve been around big business too long)
LOL! Funny idea!
Gee⌠IMHO, this close to the contest it really doesnât matter. Even if someone DID crack it, you canât do much with only an extra 24 hours of âadvance noticeâ, and most people (at least those of us with a life!) wish to go out and have a nice Friday night! 
Seriously though, any password will either generate garbage, or the real output. But it IS true that many DIFFERENT combinations of characters CAN potentially unlock it, and most analysis software simply generates the very first key it finds that does the job. Therefore, if someone DOES manage to open it that way, go ahead and PROVE you did it (AFTER the manual has been officially released) by posting an ALTERNATIVE key to unlock it. That would be a good wakeup call. BTW, commercial services charge big bucks and may take up to 25-30 days to return your opened PDF file, so if you want to wait until the middle of the build for it, go ahead!
Personally, I think itâs a tactical mistake to release the manual over one day in advance. After all, youâve sponsors from EVERY industry, and many have some SERIOUS supercomputers at their disposal for things like finite element analysis work. For example, I used to work in the building at an automotive supplier, with an ARRAY of supercomputers at my disposal for just that. I donât THINK they had âforgotten passwordâ software loaded on it, but I never checked. There ARE legit uses for that, such as opening vital internal company documents to keep your own business in operation when an employee quits or suddenly dies. Given the right sponsor in the right position with the right computers at their disposal, it may be able to be opened VERY quickly. Therefore, if I were in FIRSTâs position, Iâd simply make it a policy of releasing the encoded version no more than 24 hours before the true unveiling.
- Keith
frankly i havenât seen any cracker that can get through 128 bit encryption (most are 40 bit) plus it would take a few days (most likely more than the two days we will get) to brute force crack the documents anyways (unless you have some server farm working together), either way it is probably just easier to wait.
Recently, FIRST was gettting a little upset about some of the activity on these boards, such as people trying to circumvent the rules.
Thereâs nothing worse than when you try to help someone out and they take advantage of you. Along those lines, how about we not try and crack the manual and keep FIRST happy with all of us so they continue to do nice things for us in the future?
-Chris
Not that I would be stupid enough to do it, but with a P4 it would take about a week to crack a 4 character password, somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 weeks to crack a 5 character password, and it just gets incredibly large after that. Employing a âsupercomputerâ really wonât help because anything that could crack that fast enough probably isnât running Windows which is what most âpassword recoveryâ programs run on.
Itâs pointlessâŚjust wait a day.
Exactly. Plus - what is the REAL advantage? When you find out - itâs not like you can call your whole team togther. I say just wait the day - and just be shocked and have fun like the rest of us will!
the only reason they are releasing the encrypted files early is so their server is not swamped at 10:01AM on saturday
950+ teams all trying to download 10 or 20MBytes of files at the same time
actually I dont need the manual for the first couple days anyway - our team will spend the first meeting or two analysizing the game, how you score points, to determine what our robot needs to do to score the most points under the worst case conditions
all we need for that is the description of the game, and how to calculate the score at the end.
sure it could be cracked (in more than a few days with a supercomputer.), but so what? a 2 day advance on the rules? you still havent seen the game played, so youâll be confused as heck, and whats a 2 day gain on strategy? not much.
not to mention its not in the spirit of FIRST to get an unfair advantage on the rules.
its a short term encoding used by the goverment at one point in the past⌠of course it can be cracked, but unless you have 72hrs straight free time⌠doubt youâre gonna crack it before saturday 
Iâm not trying to be a butt or anything, but isnât this thread against forum rules?
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[quote=Clark Gilbert]Iâm not trying to be a butt or anything, but isnât this thread against forum rules?
All cracking/hacking is an intellectual challenge, but rules are rules, so Iâd say yes that is against forum rules.
So just chill out and waitâŚ
I plan to use a ouiji board to get my best guess for the manual. Not like I have anything better to do on a Friday night.
To be honest, I donât really like this poll or this thread.
But⌠âŚI decided not to delete it.
Basically, I think that FIRST has enough technical savy to encrypt the files in a way that is for all intents and purposes unbreakable in time for it to be any use.
In light of that, I decided that it wasnât worth quashing.
But⌠âŚI still donât like a lot of the tone of whatâs going on here.
I hope that this is not an indication of how things are going to go when we are all reading the rules and figuring out whether this or that strategy is allowed or not.
The term âGracious Professionalismâ is used a lot around here.
It is my hope that beyond spicing up our messages with the word we will all choose to put the ideal into practice at every opportunity in the 2004 Season.
Joe J.
I have no intention of decrypting it prior to saturday afternoon. I think for must of us weâre just really anxious to get started so weâre dreaming about decrypting the manual which probably wonât happen.
Noone is trying to get any special benefits by getting the manual early, its just a challenge. Programmers are pretty much all the same, tell us youâre releasing secrets, but noone can look at them, and weâll all want to try. Just like after we do (if we manage to) we probably wonât tell anyone. But you can bet weâll gloat!
Noone means FIRST any harm, Iâm sure.