Collaborate Disseminate
Late last year, the NSA declassified and released a redacted version of Lambros D. Callimahos’s Military Cryptanalytics, Part III. We just got most of the index. It’s hard to believe that there are any real secrets left in this 44-year-old … Continue reading More Military Cryptanalytics, Part III
This is a newly unclassified NSA history of its reaction to academic cryptography in the 1970s: “NSA Comes Out of the Closet: The Debate over Public Cryptography in the Inman Era,” Cryptographic Quarterly, Spring 1996, author still classifi… Continue reading Newly Declassified NSA Document on Cryptography in the 1970s
Nice video of a talk by Chris Shore on the history of Colossus.
Continue reading The Story of Colossus
The NSA has just declassified and released a redacted version of Military Cryptanalytics, Part III, by Lambros D. Callimahos, October 1977.
Parts I and II, by Lambros D. Callimahos and William F. Friedman, were released decades ago — I believe repeatedly, in increasingly unredacted form — and published by the late Wayne Griswold Barker’s Agean Park Press. I own them in hardcover.
Like Parts I and II, Part III is primarily concerned with pre-computer ciphers. At this point, the document only has historical interest. If there is any lesson for today, it’s that modern cryptanalysis is possible primarily because people make mistakes…
Neat story:
German divers searching the Baltic Sea for discarded fishing nets have stumbled upon a rare Enigma cipher machine used by the Nazi military during World War Two which they believe was thrown overboard from a scuttled submarine.
Thinking the… Continue reading Enigma Machine Recovered from the Baltic Sea