Cryptologic Bytes

In early December 2020, an international trio of codebreakers solved the Zodiac Killer's 340-character cipher. Learn about how they solved it from David Oranchak, one of the codebreakers.

NCMF Board Member Elonka Dunin co-authored a compelling book on codebreaking with Klaus Schmeh. Codebreaking: A Practical Guide, published in December 2020, describes the most common encryption techniques along with methods to detect and break them. It fills a gap left by outdated or very basic-level books.

On January 11, 2021, PBS will premiere a documentary film "The Codebreaker," about Elizebeth Smith Friedman. Visit the PBS site to watch the extended trailer and to see additional clips about Elizebeth Smith Friedman and her husband, William Friedman.

In this Johns Hopkins University HUB article by Doug Donovan - we learn about the Cyber Attack Predictive Index devised by computer science professor Anton Dahbura along with cybersecurity lecturer Dr. Terry Thompson and former undergraduate Divya Rangarajan.

This History.com article by Jesse Greenspan explores the origins of the Native American Code Talkers & how an overheard conversation between two Choctaw Indian soldiers serving in World War I led to a code that confounded German forces.

"The Use of Force for State Power: History and Future" by Michael Warner and John Childress, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) studies force, the coercive application of power against resistance, building from Thomas Hobbes’ observation that all self-contained political orders have some ultimate authority that uses force to both dispense justice and to defend the polity against its enemies. The authors of the book were also the keynote speakers for the NCMF's 2020 Annual Symposium, held virtually in October 2020.

As author Dr. A. Ray Miller put it, this monograph "derives...the exact number of theoretical cyptographic key settings and machine configurations for the Enigma cipher machine. Click to learn more and to read the publication.

The NCMF's social media community responded to our request for book recommendations from their own cryptologic libraries. Check out their suggestions and see what you might add to your library. If you have books to add to the list, please email webadmin@cryptologicfoundation.org

Edward Rothstein of "The New York Times" provides a thorough review of the NSA's fascinating "public face," the National Cryptologic Museum.