Cryptography

The History and Mathematics of Codes and Code Breaking

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American’s Privacy

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On December 2, 2018

In Student Posts

Professor Amitai Azioni said that privacy is vital to the democracy and freedom of American society. Without privacy, it is difficult to think independently and it is difficult to escape the pressure of government and society, so privacy is closely related to individual freedom, freedom of speech, and individual creativity and independence. Without privacy, it is impossible to be a free society. Robert Smith said that Americans especially emphasize the government’s respect for citizen privacy. Americans’ emphasis on privacy stems from distrust of the government, especially the powerful government. Because the government has the information and manipulates the state machine, it can cause great harm to citizens. Therefore, laws are in place to limit the government’s power to use citizens’ privacy. There can be religious freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of thought without government restrictions. For Americans, privacy is a sacred barrier, and the government can’t break into the door and search for it.

Professor Amitai Azioni believes that the development of modern technology has increased the possibility of the government infringing citizens’ privacy without violating the law. For example, if the police want to search the house, monitor the phone or check the mail, they must first show the court that there is sufficient evidence to suspect that the person is engaged in illegal activities and can only act after obtaining the court’s permission. If this procedure is not passed, the police will refuse to use the trial even if they find a criminal certificate. But the latest technology allows the police to find out if someone is growing drugs or seeing the text on his indoor computer through an infrared monitor without entering the house.

Advice for College Students on their online security

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On November 29, 2018

In Student Posts

First of all, to ensure the security of the computer operating system, install important and urgent patches, the operating system now has the function of automatically updating the patch, the system is often updated to ensure security. If the security of the operating system is not guaranteed, hackers or Trojans can easily obtain various private information of users through system vulnerabilities. For Windows systems, the daily login system, preferably users of the Power User or User group, avoid using the Administrators group, so even if the computer has a Trojan, the damage is controllable.

In terms of security, the iPhone that is not jailbroken is the best in common mobile phones. To use the iPhone, you need to turn on the “fingerprint unlocking” function and the “find my iPhone” function, while ensuring the security of the Apple ID password, using a unique The only secure password. If the phone is lost, log in to the iCloud website for the first time, and enable “Lost Mode” on the device in “Find My iPhone”, so that you can’t use your phone by any method (even if reset the phone), then you can hit it. The phone is reported to the operator for loss of the SIM card. In the event of an emergency, you can remotely erase the information in your phone from the iCloud website.

Try to avoid using software that is suspected of having a privacy risk. Use caution on software developed by small companies. Do not enter personal information in it.

Privacy of the Teens in Social Media

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On November 12, 2018

In Student Posts

Teens are increasingly sharing personal information on social media sites, a trend that is likely driven by the evolution of the platforms teens use as well as changing norms around sharing.

While there is now increasing awareness of and hence established defense protocols to protect against overt dangers of social media such as bullying and trolling, the silent perils of social media for youngsters remain to be tackled. These include hacking by inimical elements and phishing. Setting parent controls parental control on computers and websites is very effective for younger children, but it gets dicey with teens because such controls can be perceived as stifling for the youngster.

The severe inconsistency in the perception of privacy awareness among teens is not surprising – the concept of “privacy-paradox” has been the building block of the panoptic web of social media that provides “constant view of individuals through mechanisms that influence behavior simply because of the possibility of being observed” It is believed that teens worry more about social privacy than the privacy risks posed by third parties, in contrast to the reverse penchant for an adult.

I like the sentence in the material is that: “Teens often grow frustrated with adult assumptions that suggest that they are part of a generation that has eschewed privacy in order to participate in social media.”

Protect your personal information from the criminals

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On November 1, 2018

In Student Posts

Basic on the developing of the network all over the world, all of the personal information you posted or you searched is not as safe as past. In the beginning, people think that the information of themselves are very safe until the hacker exists.

Not only you can’t make your information safe, but it also very difficult for the country. In every second, the countries are in the information war. Everyone has asked themselves, “just how good is my password” and this is just the first step. Although you may think you have created a secure password, the likelihood is
that it’s not as secure as you anticipate.

Although we have the password, for some criminals, break your password as easy as using a knife to cut a piece of paper. So you should change your password every 60-90 days to maximize the security of your personal information on the net. Never use the same password for all of your social media, e-mail and financial accounts and always keep your passwords separate.

Protect your personal information is a very important thing to keep your survival on the network if not the criminals and the terrorists can easily use your information to commit a crime. That will not only unbeneficial for you, also it will risk for other net users.

Voder in the past and future

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On October 8, 2018

In Student Posts

From the audio, I feel that the Vox Ex Machina is a very powerful machine. The using of it will be used or already used in many ways in our daily life. The technology that mimics the human’s voice was awesome and at that age sounds like ridiculous. Although the machine was made for war at the beginning, in the peaceful ages it will also be very useful.

This machine can be made such as the GPS or something else, also the most interesting part is that when the producer makes it, it can be controlled by the pitch. This will let the machine more useful, it can be used in the arts. We can think about that the outlook is like a piano, but sounds like a human is singing. Also, it can help the people to distinguished the male and female voices.

Also, the voder’s keyboard looks like very easy to control, because it shaped as the hands. And the inside machine helps the people to decipher the digital instruction to the human’s voice. In the WWll, it also played an important role. By the encryption of the voices of the leaders, the work of intelligence theft will become even harder, and even these encrypted voices will not be deciphered at all.

In the future, the voder machine can be smaller even invisible, at that time depends on the bionic technique, it will be very helpful for the society.

The important role of the Poles in World War II

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On October 8, 2018

In Student Posts

Talking about Poland’s contribution to the Allies in World War II, apart from being on the battlefield, many guests mentioned that before the start of World War II, Poland laid the foundation for the final victory of the Allies. This is the Polish deciphering the German Enigma code. Pioneering work is done.

In 2014, with the release of the movie “Imitation Game”, the British mathematician Alan Turing, known as the “father of computer science”, began to receive public attention. The film mainly talked about Turing’s assistance to the Allies to decipher Enigma. The password, thus reversing the legendary experience of the Second World War. But because the film attributed Enigma’s deciphering to Turing, it also caused a lot of controversies.

As early as 1921, the Poles received a commercial Enigma cipher from the Germans, three outstanding graduates of the Poznan Institute of Mathematics, Marian Reyevsky, Gertz Rozki, and Henrik Zogarsky began to study its principles and tried to decipher.

Of course, the military Enigma cipher machine is more complicated than the commercial machine. The Polish wants to decipher it and must touch the actual machine. Fortunately, Hans Tillow Schmidt, who worked in the German Defense Password Office, handed the French intelligence agency a cryptographic machine manual and a button from September to October 1932. The instructions were set and the Frenchman handed it over to Poland.

At the end of 1932, the Poles had already derived the internal workings of the military Enigma cipher. Subsequently, the Polish company began to copy the Enigma cipher machine. At the end of 1938, the Poles also invented a cryptograph called Bombe, mechanized to simulate the encryption process, which is equivalent to the cooperation of six Enigma cipher machines. The “bombe” machine can find the key of the day within 2 hours, which can save hundreds of people’s manual work.

And for the German, the most significant mistake of them is that they even don’t know the machines and the ciphers were spread to the other countries, and the cipher the German used in WWll, were too similar to the cipher they used in the Wwl. This also provides many chances and helps to the Allies. And before the German-occupied the Polan, the Poles already give the Bombe machine to the British, this also helps Turing to further decipher the German cipher.

How was the German cipher deciphered in World War II?

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On September 30, 2018

In Student Posts

At the Brechley Manor, in addition to Knox, the deciphering community, there is also a mathematics wizard, Turing. He graduated from Cambridge University and relied on his research on cryptography after the war. He became one of the pioneers in the era of electronic computing.

First of all, they started with the development of a machine that can imitate or explain every “dummy mystery” of the German Defence Force, so that it can launch all the coding procedures that are frequently changed when the main command of the German army is issued day and night, and when the adult orders are issued. After a difficult attack, the British finally made the machine with the above functions and named it “bomb.”

At the end of 1939, the “bomb” deciphered the German code, and the British were ecstatic. Since then, the German secret plan and action plan has been continuously transmitted from the Brenchley Manor to Colonel Menzies, and then directly to Churchill’s desk. In fact, most of the German actions during the “World War II” failed to win the British, but the British have always concealed the source of intelligence, and have never caused doubts from opponents.

On July 2, 1940, Hitler released the first “Sea Lion” combat plan, which is also the British local landing operations plan. At the beginning of the campaign, Churchill and the Air Force staff learned most of the German Air Force – sometimes even all of them – through “super secrets”.

In response to the command of the German Air Force Commander Goring to seize the air superiority, the Royal Air Force has developed a plan to concentrate its superiority against the enemy. Since the number of aircraft of the British Air Force is not much in Germany, the fighter squadron and the main defensive forces can only be concentrated at the appropriate time, in the right place and at the appropriate height to deal with the enemy’s main attack power. Relying on early warning radars and deciphered German military intelligence, the Royal Air Force can always take advantage of the arrival of the Nazi Air Force to accurately intercept the interception, without the need for time and space patrols to guard against German raids – the British Air Force has greatly reduced the pilot’s physical consumption and gasoline Wait for strategic material consumption.

On August 13, 1940, over Sussex and Kent, 80 German “Donil 17” bombers, and a larger number of “Junker 88” dive bombers, flew to the British hinterland and coastline to carry out bombing missions. Due to the dense clouds in the sky, the German escort fighters could not take off as planned, and the bombers had to attack alone.

The British Air Force Command had already known the German action plan in advance. When the German plane was found on the radar, it immediately launched an operational plan that was already ready. In this confrontation, the German Air Force lost a total of 47 aircraft and more than 80 were injured. The British Air Force lost only 13 aircraft.

So actually in the WW1, the cipher of the German military should not be posted. It directly results in that the cipher of WW2 is deciphered.

Has the United States discovered signs of a terrorist attack by bin Laden before 9/11?

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On September 24, 2018

In Student Posts

This is not the case. Many of the information disclosed after 9/11 show that the US intelligence agencies are aware of Osama bin Laden. It is only because the US intelligence agencies have complex systems, serious internal consumption, lack of unified command, cooperation and scheduling, etc. Take the possession of Osama bin Laden seriously. For example, the FBI agent John O’Neill was the person directly responsible for investigating Osama bin Laden before 9/11, but he eventually retired from the FBI and became a victim of a terrorist attack on September 11. It can be said that John O’Neill has an almost crazy obsession with investigating bin Laden. In order to investigate Osama bin Laden, John O’Neill needs a lot of intelligence support, but the Bureau of Investigation did not give enough support to O’Neill’s work. The FBI has always been ruthless for employees who have a distinct personality, ambitious and dare to challenge mainstream thinking.

John O’Neill can be said to be the closest person to Osama bin Laden before the 9/11, but he was ruined by the FBI and other intelligence agencies’ endless internal consumption. In 2004, the investigation report issued by the Independent Investigation Committee of the 9/11 Congress showed The CIA and the National Security Bureau have long mastered the information that John O’Neill needs, but refused to share it. This mechanism for refusing to share information among government agencies comes from the Federal Criminal Procedure Regulations, which prohibits the disclosure of any material related to criminal investigations. Later, this rule was restricted by the FBI to limit the investigators of this Council. Means: It is strictly forbidden for anyone to share information, even for agents in this Council. Like the Bureau of Investigation, the CIA has also turned this barrier between its own and the Bureau of Investigation into a system. The CIA believes that sharing intelligence may undermine “sensitive sources and means”. The National Security Agency directly limits the transmission of important information. Agents of other agencies can only see brief reports on intelligence, and cannot obtain the original monitoring records of the National Security Bureau.

From these details, we can see that the main part is that the United State didn’t make a very comprehensive protection.
Comprehensive protection

Why people notice the cipher after 1850s?

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On September 17, 2018

In Student Posts

Based on the rapid development of the entire planet in all aspects of the nineteenth century, it is not just industry, art, religion, and politics. The most important thing is that the war broke out more and more frequently.

For an example，throughout the war, password deciphering may be the most protected secret of the United States after the atomic bomb. Even those working in the Naval Communications Building have very few people who know the existence of these machines and their uses. These machines, which are hidden deep in the chamber, look strange, mostly composed of gears, rotors, sprocket teeth, electric lights and dials. Their official name is “Rapid Analytical Machine” (RAM), but in private they have mysterious and quirky nicknames, such as the copper snake, gypsy, and nuisance. For the few people who are fortunate enough to understand their uses and principles, these machines represent the core secrets of the United States, that is, to decipher the complex passwords of Japan and Germany, the most secret is to decipher the password of the Soviet Union. In the 1840s, they took computing power to the limit.

Until the WW2, with the boring of the computer, the era of brute force cracking is coming, and mathematicians dominate the password war. Leading to the loss of the Atlantic battle in Germany, the card was seen by the Allies. The information age was opened after the war.

Now, although the computers’ calculate ability are very mature, but there are also many ciphers need to be decoded, such as the Beale Cipher. Most of the ciphers we used today are helpful for us to protect our privacy, and only a little part of people decipher those ciphers. Usually, some ciphers are made for practice human’s brain nowadays.

Is Little Brother “Not credible” ?

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On September 8, 2018

In Student Posts

There is a loud slogan in the book: “People over the age of 25 are not credible!” However, the author of this book is over 25 years old. Whoever wants to save the world is so easy and so cool, let’s try it.

Since the author always preached the basic knowledge of encryption, chip positioning, and gesture recognition on the whole page, I just thought that this was a safety technical textbook disguised as a novel. After reading two or three chapters, I found out that there is indeed a story in it. If I look at a few chapters, I will feel that the safety technical textbook is better. There is no reason for it, and the setting is too unreasonable.

A big problem (or big advantage) of sci-fi in the near future is that it is easy for readers to compare reality with fiction and judge whether the virtual scene of the novel makes sense. For example, “Little Brother”, which only discusses existing technology applications, the comparison is readily available. At the beginning of the story, the United States is already a country that widely uses public safety monitoring technology. Then the San Francisco Bay Bridge collapsed with a terrorist attack, killing thousands of people. Based on this, the Department of Homeland Security continued to upgrade San Francisco’s surveillance and security, began illegal arrest and abuse of unrelated citizens, and caused the underground group of middle school students led by the protagonist to fight back by hacking, and was eventually defeated by crime exposure. This book was written in 2007, after the 9/11 era, so it is not necessarily appropriate to take the 911 that does not exist in the Department of Homeland Security. But in 2013, we can have a more appropriate analogy, that is the Boston Marathon explosion. Of course, the Boston explosion did not kill people. More importantly, the suspects were quickly identified through surveillance videos and later arrested. There was no continuous security alert and monitoring upgrades. So which scene is more realistic?

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