On ANY project you're signing up at your own risk. Nobody will make responsible for your computer if the project (intentionally or accidentally) causes problems on it.

About this project, seems safe like the rest. Running the project won't cause problems on your computer (again, no warranty). The thing in discussion here is if other people can do bad things with the project's results.

It was not the safety of the computer I was concerned about (not like I can afford to replace it when ever it goes bad or burns out); it was the intentions and validity of the project that I was questioning. I went to their site and from what I was able to read about it, they seem to be doing the same thing as HashClash.

After experience, I won't crunch for projects whose affiliation is not with a reputable research institution. So far, I've only been crunching for those projects whose results have some scientific value, but the potential for the results by DRTG to be misused are too significant to be ignored.

In my mind, DRTG is not much unlike the late Shoft project.

XML-stats are turned on

i feel its just as safe as hashclash, but I am going to watch it a little more. For now though, i am crunching for them.

There's an ocean between HashClash and DRTG: the former is one's master's thesis to investigate a computer sciences theory and is under the auspices of an university, whose results have already been published. The latter is a couple of free-lancers' use of DC to make their entrepreneurial efforts easier, impersonating as a research lab whose audience is made up primarily by script-kid hackers.

Augustine,

TheMinouche Research Laboratories (Germany) is a legitimate research & development organization. Hashbreaker.com (USA) is a commercial organization. Hashbreaker.com has FUNDED the TMRL DRTG Project as a hobby. That is why they DO NOT SELL the results that are created using BOINC. Instead they offer up bandwidth so that Security Professionals worldwide can benefit from better password auditing and recovery. We do not cater to 'script-kid' hackers. When found they are reported to the proper authorities. We do not impersonate anyone, we have provided the source code for our project to a number of people, and have responded to every query for information. Sorry if you feel we are some evil cause.

Because some of the results from the TMRL project reach 30GB to 1/2 Terabyte, we also offer a service to ship the information on CD or DVD. The amount charged is only for the cost of media, time to burn, shipping and tax. Any proceeds from this help provide additional funding for the TMRL DRTG project; it is not considered 'profit'. Undoubtedly many people may interpret this as profit; a full ledger of accounts will be posted in the Hashbreaker.com forums for all CD & DVD sales (Of BOINC material), as well as a ledger showing the cost to run TMRL DRTG. As you will see, we donate far more to the project than we will ever take in. We also spend more on servers, electricity and bandwidth than we will ever make on CD's & DVD's.

Everyone else,

The initial set of test tables (MySQLSHA1 Mixalpha-numeric 1-7) tables are being converted to torrents at the moment. Only four people participated in the initial test (TheMinouche, bomber497, Janus and Myself). The tables are 37.4 GB in size, and will be free for anyone to download.

Spudster

Spudster,

Forgive me for voicing my suspicions in an open forum. I hope that others take a hard look at the information you provided here and in the project's site in order to make a well-founded decision about contributing to the project, whichever it may be.

Good luck.

Augustine,

Thank you for voicing concern. Computer security is often a tricky and controversial subject. We would not be running such a project if we truly felt we where helping the bad guys… Any advice to better enhance our project is always welcome, we seek to make our project as transparent as possible.

Thanks,

Spudster

The Minouche Research Laboratories produces software like "Hunga Bunga" - a wireless LAN sniffer which uses these Tables:

The logo of the project is also the logo of Hunga Bunga.
Nothing else to day.

So. Is it "safe" to join?

Look. I have a slightly jaundiced view of ANY data. How it's used and where it's used can have many shades of gray. There are some things used in modern medicine that are directly related to the tortures performed by the Nazis. The original idea was Atomic energy for plentiful and cheap energy. But what we got was Hiroshima and Nagasaki and several hundred square miles of Earth that will never be habitable for thousands of years. Some people call it progress.

Some very profitable companies in the world have some very shady business dealings Does that make the profitable company any less profitable, or the shady businesses any more respectable? These guys have said that any results from the BOINC side will be free. Can we take them at their word? Simple answer is, no. You can't take anyone at their word nowadays. But, we can hold their feet to the fire, and ensure that they keep their promise.

And, yes. I have both white hat friends, and black hat friends. Every once in a while, to get something done, I have to ask a black hat friend for help. They also ask me for help, too. Same for the white hat friends. Does that mean I trust them with sensative info? Nope. It means I work smart, keep valuable data safe, and still keep friendships. Do they trust me 100%? Of course not. If this was 100 years ago, things might be different, but it's now almost 2007.

Do you join, or not? The final answer is up to you. If you're worrying about someone making a profit, look at eBay. All kinds of things are sold there that, in some cases, clearly are marked not for resale. If someone downloads their huge tables, and then re-archives them differently, then they can sell them.

It's a vicious circle.

And I do agree that "Minouche Research Laboratories" is questionable, as I just get back 2 hits from Google.

Just wanted to add the project to the stats, but the website is dead.

Yes, parts are unreachable, but a few I can still access. But upload, download, scheduler, message boards, account page, account creation page are gone.

Do you need it to be online when adding it, or can you add it if I supply the info needed (if I have it all, that is)? I've got url's for rss, stats, scheduler, last nights xml exports, maybe more if you need it

What parts are accessible? I get server timeout.

I won't add it until it's back. Won't risk doing all the work for nothing.

Sorry for the problems, This morning we had a hardware failure on the firewall. It has been replaced and should now be fully operational. Redundant systems will be in place tonight.

Thanks,

Spudster

Willy: ok

PovAddict: I can still access the front page, and the top teams page. Some hours ago the forum list was accessable too, but that's gone now as well

Must be some caching from your side, I can't access anything. Server times out before browser can even ask for a page.

Relating to this project - we have added two validators to eliminate the backlog and keep the wait for pending credits to a minumum. -Spudster

PovAddict: hmmm. yeah, seems to be the case

Spudster: And I was actually thinking it was incredible how short a period credit remained pending Anyway, any word on when the project will be up and running again?

Everything should be fully functional, due to some DNS adjustments, it make take up to one hour to propogate. If BOINC isn't working, restarting the client will force a re-check of DNS.

UPDATE: As promissed, the MySQLSHA1 tables that where created during the testing phase of TMRL DRTG are now avilable for free download on the Hashbreaker.com site. They are 37.4 GB in size.

Ok - had to re-boot, though

So, Willy. When will you add it to stats and BAM?

I already added it to stats, just haven't enabled the link.