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9298a35
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It is quite possible that British Intelligence demanded that Babbage keep his work secret, thus providing them with a nine-year head start over the rest of the world.
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Simon Singh |
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9e42146
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French listening posts learned to recognize a radio operator's fist. Once encrypted, a message is sent in Morse code, as a series of dots and dashes, and each operator can be identified by his pauses, the speed of transmission, and the relative lengths of dots and dashes. A fist is the equivalent of a recognizable style of handwriting.
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Simon Singh |
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3933961
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Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were guilty of unjustified wiretaps, and President John F. Kennedy conducted dubious wiretaps in the first month of his presidency.
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Simon Singh |
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ca3f16c
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During a security briefing at the White House, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld breaks some tragic news: "Mr President, three Brazilian soldiers were killed yesterday while supporting U.S. troops." "My God!" shrieks President George W. Bush, and he buries his head in his hands. He remains stunned and silent for a full minute. Eventually, he looks up, takes a deep breath, and asks Rumsfeld: "How many is a brazillion?"
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Simon Singh |
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50ee699
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The three Britons had to sit back and watch as their discoveries were rediscovered by Diffie, Hellman, Merkle, Rivest, Shamir and Adleman over the next three years.
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Simon Singh |
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176e40d
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Chinese wrote messages on fine silk, which was then scrunched into a tiny ball and covered in wax. The messenger would then swallow the ball of wax.
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Simon Singh |
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a08cf13
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He was a rather quirky worker, and he didn't really fit into the day-to-day business of GCHQ. But in terms of coming up with new ideas he was quite exceptional. You had to sort through some rubbish sometimes, but he was very innovative and always willing to challenge the orthodoxy.
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Simon Singh |
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cf6eb66
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The first microdot to be spotted by the FBI was in 1941, following a tip-off that the Americans should look for a tiny gleam from the surface of a letter, indicative of smooth film.
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Simon Singh |
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f72689e
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We would be in real trouble if everybody in GCHQ was like him, but we can tolerate a higher proportion of such people than most organizations. We put up with a number of people like him. Figure 66 James Ellis. (photo credit 6.4) One of Ellis's greatest qualities was his breadth of knowledge.
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Simon Singh |
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db93dd4
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first ever military cryptographic device, the Spartan scytale, dating back to the fifth century B.C. The scytale is a wooden staff around which a strip of leather or parchment is wound,
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Simon Singh |
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3d5b34e
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The German military were equally unenthusiastic, because they were oblivious to the damage caused by their insecure ciphers during the Great War. For example, they had been led to believe that the Zimmermann telegram had been stolen by American spies in Mexico, and so they blamed that failure on Mexican security. They still did not realize that the telegram had in fact been intercepted and deciphered by the British, and that the Zimmermann ..
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Simon Singh |
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de4b80d
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Because a quantum computer deals with 1's and 0's that are in a quantum superposition, they are called quantum bits, or qubits (pronounced "cubits"). The advantage of qubits becomes even clearer when we consider more particles."
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Simon Singh |
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06d7998
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diagonally polarized photons are in a quantum quandary when confronted by a vertical Polaroid filter.
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Simon Singh |
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c0903d2
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half of them at random will be blocked, and half will pass through, and those that do pass through will be reoriented with a vertical polarization.
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Simon Singh |
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159507c
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significance of the key, as opposed to the algorithm, is an enduring principle of cryptography. It was definitively stated in 1883 by the Dutch linguist Auguste Kerckhoffs von Nieuwenhof in his book La Cryptographie militaire: "Kerckhoffs' Principle: The security of a cryptosystem must not depend on keeping secret the crypto-algorithm. The security depends only on keeping secret the key."
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Simon Singh |
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2c990f8
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250 qubits, it is possible to represent roughly 1075 combinations, which is greater than the number of atoms in the universe. If it were possible to achieve the appropriate superposition with 250 particles, then a quantum computer could perform 1075 simultaneous computations,
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Simon Singh |
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0e82f83
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The letters a and l are the most common in Arabic, partly because of the definite article al-, whereas the letter j appears only a tenth as frequently.
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Simon Singh |
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efa15ae
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the Arab scholars were also capable of destroying ciphers. They in fact invented cryptanalysis, the science of unscrambling a message without knowledge of the key.
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Simon Singh |
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d845320
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What is the least number of weights that can be used on a set of scales to weigh any whole number of kilograms from 1 to 40?
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Simon Singh |
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25807dc
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For decades, ENIAC, not Colossus, was considered the mother of all computers.
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Simon Singh |
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4d9df00
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NSA employs more mathematicians, buys more computer hardware, and intercepts more messages than any other organization in the world. It is the world leader when it comes to snooping.
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Simon Singh |
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6a1cea9
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In the 1970s, banks attempted to distribute keys by employing special dispatch riders who had been vetted and who were among the company's most trusted employees.
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Simon Singh |
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c331cb0
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dispatch riders would race across the world with padlocked briefcases, personally distributing keys to everyone who would receive messages from the bank over the next week. As business networks grew in size, as more messages were sent, and as more keys had to be delivered, the banks found that this distribution process became a horrendous logistical nightmare, and the overhead costs became prohibitive.
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Simon Singh |
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390fa34
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alphabetic scripts tend to have between 20 and 40 characters (Russian, for example, has 36 signs, and Arabic has 28).
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Simon Singh |
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e4fbd52
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When ships carrying COMSEC material came into dock, crypto-custodians would march onboard, collect stacks of cards, paper tapes, floppy disks, or whatever other medium the keys might be stored on, and then deliver them to the intended recipients.
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Simon Singh |
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5ba4c44
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scripts that rely on semagrams tend to have hundreds or even thousands of signs (Chinese has over 5,000).
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Simon Singh |
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efcef9d
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Syllabic scripts occupy the middle ground, with between 50 and 100 syllabic characters. Beyond these two facts, Linear B was an unfathomable mystery.
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Simon Singh |
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ca5c041
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Quantum cryptography is an unbreakable system of encryption.
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Simon Singh |
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8db6821
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one-way functions are sometimes called Humpty Dumpty functions. Modular arithmetic, sometimes called clock arithmetic in schools, is an area of mathematics that is rich in one-way functions. In modular arithmetic, mathematicians consider a finite group of numbers arranged in a loop,
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Simon Singh |
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3635671
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in the 1980s it was only government, the military and large businesses that owned computers powerful enough to run RSA. Not surprisingly, RSA Data Security, Inc., the company set up to commercialize RSA, developed their encryption products with only these markets in mind.
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Simon Singh |
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4e12dfd
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Zimmermann believed that everybody deserved the right to the privacy that was offered by RSA encryption, and he directed his political zeal toward developing an RSA encryption product for the masses.
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Simon Singh |
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f1c402c
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Zimmermann employed a neat trick that used asymmetric RSA encryption in tandem with old-fashioned symmetric encryption.
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Simon Singh |
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07f0c8a
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Alan Turing was another cryptanalyst who did not live long enough to receive any public recognition. Instead of being acclaimed a hero, he was persecuted for his homosexuality. In 1952, while reporting a burglary to the police, he naively revealed that he was having a homosexual relationship. The police felt they had no option but to arrest and charge him with "Gross Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885." ..
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Simon Singh |
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275de19
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Jestlize nekdy plati, ze nutnost je matkou invence, pak je rovnez mozne, ze ohrozeni je matkou kryptoanalyzy.
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Simon Singh |
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1c67f72
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Po prvni svetove valce se Spojenci nebali nikoho.
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Simon Singh |
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984d9cc
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Polsky uspech v prolomeni Enigmy byl dan tremi faktory: strachem, matematikou a spionazi.
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Simon Singh |
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dc7f244
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Kolem roku 1790, kdyz byla ratifikovana Listina svobod, mohl soukrome mluvit kdokoliv s kymkoliv - s jistotou, jakou uz dnes nema nikdo - proste tak, ze poposel po ceste kousek od ostatnich a podival se, jestli se nekdo neskryva v kerich.
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Simon Singh |
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3bcd35a
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The correct use of a strong cipher is a clear boon to sender and receiver, but the misuse of a weak cipher can generate a very false sense of security.
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Simon Singh |
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04cab9b
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Turing's secret had been exposed, and his sexuality was now public knowledge. The British Government withdrew his security clearance. He was forbidden to work on research projects relating to the development of the computer. He was forced to consult a psychiatrist and had to undergo hormone treatment, which made him impotent and obese. Over the next two years he became severely depressed, and on June 7, 1954, he went to his bedroom, carryin..
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Simon Singh |
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f7cd7a2
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Each distinct cipher can be considered in terms of a general encrypting method, known as the algorithm, and a key, which specifies the exact details of a particular encryption.
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Simon Singh |
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7f5b6b8
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The best random keys are created by harnessing natural physical processes, such as radioactivity, which is known to exhibit truly random behavior. The
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Simon Singh |
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30d653b
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Perhaps the greatest danger in the way that alternative therapists behave is simply the promotion of their own treatments when patients should be in the care of a conventional doctor. There are numerous reports of patients with serious conditions (e.g. diabetes, cancer, AIDS) suffering harm after following irresponsible advice form alternative practitioners instead of following the advice of a doctor.
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medicine
scinece
treatment
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Simon Singh |
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4205d3c
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This special was followed one month later by "Bart the Genius." This was the first genuine episode of The Simpsons , inasmuch as it premiered the famous trademark opening sequence and included the debut of Bart's notorious catchphrase "Eat my shorts." Most noteworthy of all, "Bart the Genius" contains a serious dose of mathematics. In many ways, this episode set the tone for what was to follow over the next two decades, namely a relentless ..
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mathematical-secrets
the-simpsons
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Simon Singh |
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deb536c
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Nao existe utilidade pratica em saber que p e irracional, mas, se podemos saber, entao certamente seria intoleravel nao saber.
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Simon Singh |