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June 11, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR LORI KANE IN
MA
Computers have brought us from ancient times, where ciphers
were as simple
as substituting one letter for another, to technology such
as the Enigma,
which was an electro-magnetic machine used by the Germans
in the second
World War, to the electronic forms we have today. Today we
mostly use two
kinds of encryption: public and private key cryptography (and
the key
systems that you've probably heard of: DES, RSA, etc.). This
technology
encrypts information using an algorithm that is computationally
difficult
to solve (within a practical amount of time) without having
the key.
One of the most important code breakers in history is Britain's
Alan
Turing. He is considered one of the founders of code breaking
and computer
science. Turing is most famous for cracking the Enigma cipher
machine
which greatly helped the Allies win the battle of the Atlantic
and
eventually the war. You can read about his fascinating life
and tragic end
on the following sites:
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/
http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/
Here are other good sites for information on cryptography:
http://www.busan.edu/~nic/networking/puis/ch06_01.htm
http://www.vectorsite.net/ttcode.html
The Code Book by Simon Singh is also a great source on the
history of
cryptography (and can be found at most book stores).
...I'll have to let one of the other mentors talk about pattern
finding.
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