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I thought this was a well written article because the author is informative without being too dry in her descriptions. Blogs do tend to be more conversational and this one is no exception. The academic focus on this relatively historic topic is still present, but the article is written for a wider audience than the academic community.

Astronomy is a very interesting subject but also a very complex one. I picked this article because the author does a good job of making a complex subject simpler to understand, while keeping the topic interesting by addressing the reader with a natural and creative tone.

"The remains of a World War Two carrier pigeon which was lost in action 70 years ago while delivering a top secret message over enemy lines has been found in a chimney in Bletchingley, Surrey. The skeleton of the bird has a small red cylinder attached to its foot which contains a mysterious cigarette paper sized coded message. The message is deemed so sensitive, that Codebreakers at GCHQ in Cheltenham are now frantically trying to decipher it."

Britain's code-breakers acknowledged Friday that an encrypted handwritten message from World War II, found on the leg of a long-dead carrier pigeon in a household chimney in southern England, has thwarted all their efforts to decode it since it was sent to them last month.

JN-25: code used during and slightly before world war II

I feel this article is well written for a few reasons. If has the feel of telling a story but remains formal and in the style of academic writing at the same time. The flow of the post is very well done also as each paragraph logically leads into the next. Lastly, the post concludes very well tying in everything the post discusses and how they relate to science in the world today.

This article describes how, during the Cold War, the major distributor of cryptography machines (Crypto AG) worked with the NSA. This professional relationship provided the NSA with shortcuts on how to break ciphers created from the different machines. Also, Crypto AG was revealed as not having given the most up to date models to all countries, probably through deception. This raises the question of morality involving basic warfare. How is it moral for this supposedly trusted third party company to have special allegiances with the United States?Would the United States have the same opinion on this actions morality if they were the ones being sold out of date equipment? Or if one of their opponents had shortcuts?

Because Snowden wrote it

Recently China blocked the Facebook app "Whatsapp," and I find this interesting because by the decision of their government, they can decide your intake of content from the outside world and where to cut it off. Some parts of this relate to Cryptography because people have become very creative in getting around firewalls and accessing blocked sites anyways.

Cool story about female codebreaker during WWII. There is a new book out about her story.

Interesting article describing the people who worked at Bletchley Park (UK) during WWII and the secrecy act that kept them silent. The article makes compelling comparisons to people today like Edward Snowden, who are legally bound to secrecy but ignore it. What are the ethical implications of being asked to keep military secrets? Of sharing military secrets? How do the differences between today's generation and the WWII generation affect how these ethics are viewed?

Since Israel's bombardment of Gaza, 44 million hacking attempts have been made on Israeli government websites. This article discusses the details of the hacking attempts, and the extent of their success or failure.

During one of our classes, we briefly discussed the use of cryptography to protect eyewitness and victim information during the investigation of human rights violations. The individual I mentioned that day was Patrick Ball, who now will lead a new organization focused on "the data-driven and scientific side of analyzing human rights violations around the world."

Instead of hiring "upper-class twits from Oxford and Cambridge," A government communications agency tried a new angle on recruiting hackers. They decided to combat hackers with other experienced hackers by posting an online puzzle and offering a job interview to those who solved it.