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#codebreaking

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Public
Flipboard Art & Photo Desk

35 years ago, Jim Sanborn presented the cryptographic sculpture Kryptos to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. Made from copper, granite, quartz and petrified wood, it has four sections, each of which holds a message in code. Over the years, three of the sections have been solved — by CIA code breakers, a California computer scientist, and the National Security Agency. Now, 79-year-old Sanborn says he's going to auction off the solution to the final message, with the company arranging the sale estimating a winning bid between $300,000 and $500,000. Here's @newyorktimes's story on why he's doing it now, and what he hopes the winning bidder will do with the secret.

flip.it/_TN3II

The Kryptos sculpture has sat in a courtyard at C.I.A. headquarters in an area not open to the public for 35 years.
The New York Times · A Solution to the C.I.A.’s ‘Kryptos’ Sculpture Goes Up for AuctionBy John Schwartz
#Science#Technology#Mathematics
Public
Bruce MacDonald

"A lover of puzzles and crosswords while growing up in Pittsburgh during the Great Depression, Mrs. Parsons deciphered German military messages that had been created by an Enigma machine, a typewriter-size device with a keyboard wired to internal rotors, which generated millions of codes. Her efforts provided Allied forces with information critical to evading, attacking and sinking enemy submarines."
nytimes.com/2025/04/30/world/j

The New York Times · Julia Parsons, U.S. Navy Code Breaker During World War II, Dies at 104By Michael S. Rosenwald
#Enigma#obituary#codebreaking
Public
earthling

Code Warriors: NSA's Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union by Stephen Budiansky, 2016

Stephen Budiansky—a longtime expert in cryptology—tells the fascinating story of how NSA came to be, from its roots in World War II through the fall of the Berlin Wall. Along the way, he guides us through the fascinating challenges faced by cryptanalysts, and how they broke some of the most complicated codes of the 20th c.

@bookstodon
#books
#cryptology
#codebreaking
#NSA

A sweeping, in-depth history of NSA. The National Security Agency was born out of the legendary codebreaking programs of World War II that cracked the famed Enigma machine and other German and Japanese codes, thereby turning the tide of Allied victory. In the postwar years, as the United States developed a new enemy in the Soviet Union, our intelligence community found itself targeting not soldiers on the battlefield, but suspected spies, foreign leaders, and even American citizens. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, NSA played a vital, often fraught and controversial role in the major events of the Cold War, from the Korean War to the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vietnam and beyond. With access to new documents, Budiansky shows where the agency succeeded and failed during the Cold War, but his account also offers crucial perspective for assessing NSA today in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. Budiansky shows how NSA’s obsession with recording every bit of data and decoding every signal is far from a new development; throughout its history the depth and breadth of the agency’s reach has resulted in both remarkable successes and destructive failures. Featuring a series of appendixes that explain the technical details of Soviet codes and how they were broken, this is a rich and riveting history of the underbelly of the Cold War, and an essential and timely read for all who seek to understand the origins of the modern NSA.
Public
Pablonius Monk 🇺🇦

Fascinating documentary! 💙

The Codebreaker: Elizabeth Smith Friedman 📺

"In 2008, decades after her death, the files were finally declassified. If we could miss something as big as Elizabeth, who is crucial in two world wars, who fights crime, who fights the mob, if we missed her, who else are we missing?"

youtube.com/watch?v=JiQz58Y67T

YouTubeThe Codebreaker | Full Documentary | AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | PBSBy American Experience | PBS
#Cryptography#CodeBreaking#Enigma
Public *
Victoria Stuart 🇨🇦 🏳️‍⚧️

Cracking the code: messages found in silk dress decoded by Manitoba researcher 👗
winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/cracking-t

* coded messages in folds of a Victorian-era dress finally decoded
* The Silk Dress Cryptogram
* published in August 2023 edition of Cryptologia

Update:
Dress code: How a Winnipeg codebreaker cracked one of the 'world's top unsolved messages'
cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/co

Winnipeg · Cracking the code: messages found in silk dress decoded by Manitoba researcherCoded messages found in the folds of a Victorian-era dress were finally cracked by a University of Manitoba researcher almost a decade after they were discovered.
#history#fashion#cryptography
Public
Anthony Collette :donor: / Loistava

Code Breaking in the Pacific

You’ve heard about Enigma cipher machines, and how codebreakers at England’s Bletchley Park cracked messages during World War II. There are amazing stories about how the specialized machines they built helped them decipher messages, and become the predecessors of today’s computers.

But you may not have heard about a different kind of codebreaking going on in the Pacific during the same period. The problems and techniques were completely different, because enemy messages were transmitted in code, not cipher. And there were some incredible success stories from this period, such as the battle of Midway, which turned the tide of the conflict in the Pacific.

The methods used in code breaking behind those successes are quite different to those used against encryption machine ciphers such as the Enigma. The reason is that the main cipher systems used by the Japanese were based on code books rather than a machine. “Code Breaking in the Pacific” is the first book to provide a complete description of those systems and the development of the techniques used to break them. It addresses the last major gap in the literature of WW2 cryptography and most likely the last major gap in the literature of WW2.

This very dense book was written by two mathematicians: Peter Donovan and John Mack. Math and I have never been on good terms, we’re definitely not friends. So the math in the book is *completely* over my head. But there were some interesting nuggets that jumped out:

☑️​ As early as 1916, the British were using Hollerith punch-card equipment from the U.S. to decode enemy messages. The Hollerith company eventually became IBM.

☑️​ The skills required for successful decoding . . . [of these messages] are more akin to the linguistic challenge of determining the nature and meaning of an unknown written language than to those needed for elucidating the operation of a cipher machine . . .”

☑️​ Lightly used code books were particularly difficult to crack.

☑️​ The use of boilerplate messages by the other side provided codebreakers with a way to crack messages.

☑️​ Some of these systems were designed to keep information secure only for a few hours.

☑️​ Choosing to doubly encrypt messages often made the system *less* secure, not more secure.

☑️​ Major pieces of disinformation were known as “purple whales.” 🐳​🐋​🐳​

If you have an interest in math and history, this may be right up your alley.

But this book isn’t cheap. One option: “check it out like a library book” from a local university library.

#WW2
#CodeBreaking
#BookReview
#Cryptography
#Enigma
#EnigmaMachine
#BletchleyPark
#CodeBreakingInThePacific
#TelegraphicCodeBooks

Amazon:
amazon.com/Code-Breaking-Pacif

Note: This is *not* an affiliate link. I’m simply recommending this high-quality book for those who might find it interesting.

Book Cover: Code Breaking in the Pacific, by Peter Donovan and John Mack.
Public
Anthony Collette :donor: / Loistava

Hello Fellow Mastolorians!

Suppose you had a friend with an interest in *history* who wanted to know more about cybersecurity.

What would you use as a good introduction to the topic?

Here’s a suggestion . . .

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies
by Jason Fagone

When asked “What drew you to this story?” — author Jason Fagone answered:

“Well, it’s one of these amazing American origin stories. A hundred years ago, a young woman in her early twenties [Elizebeth Smith Friedman] suddenly became one of the greatest codebreakers in the country. She taught herself how to solve secret messages without knowing the key. Even though she started out as a poet, not a mathematician, she turned out to be a genius at solving these very difficult puzzles, and her solutions ended up changing the 20th century. She helped us win the world wars. And she also shaped the intelligence community as we know it today.”

An NPR Best Book of 2017

“In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation’s history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler’s Reich, cracking multiple versions of the #Enigma machine used by German spies.”

Seriously, I thought this book was fantastic. Elizebeth Friedman’s team saved at least 8,000 lives when the Queen Mary was being hunted by German U-boats, and she directly helped stop the Nazification of South America. She became — by far — America’s most famous #codebreaker during her lifetime, with stories about her appearing in national magazines and newspapers all over the country.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable, great read! Probably the best single book for anyone starting out, trying to gain an understanding of the historical landscape of the subject. It definitely helps the reader imagine the through-lines running from the past up to the current time. It’s extremely accessible for the interested, non-technical reader. This account of Elizebeth Friedman’s life and accomplishments is “page-turning, popular history at its finest.”

#ElizebethFriedman
#BookReview
#Bookstodon
#codebreaking

Amazon:
amazon.com/Woman-Who-Smashed-C

Note: This is *not* an affiliate link. I’m simply recommending this high-quality book for those who might find it interesting.

Jason Fagone’s pinned Twitter thread about Elizebeth Friedman: twitter.com/jfagone/status/912
Jason Fagone’s Substack: jfagone.substack.com/

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies
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