Math 1111: Cryptography

"Over time, all data approaches deleted, or public."

The latest 99% Invisible podcast episode focuses on locks and lockpicking. I think you'll find some nice parallels with cryptography, especially around Kerckhoff's Principle and the idea of not knowing if your security system has been broken.

An app circulated among the protesters in Hong Kong that supposedly was for coordinating protest efforts, but was in reality a phishing attack that would track keystrokes, messages, and identity information of devices it was installed on. Many signs point to the Chinese government as the origin of the malware, though. Not the first time a government has done something like planting spies and monitoring protestors. We saw this in Little Brother too, with the DHS spies on the Xnet.

High school student suing Philadelphia's Lower Merion School District for remotely accessing his webcam. And maybe you read the Superintendent's response and thought, "well, maybe this whole business is getting blown out of proportion." It isn't.

I'm just going to resubmit the bookmark directly to this page so I'll be sure it ends up publicly in the group. This wasn't mentioned in Singh chapter 2, but it was created around the time period discussed in the chapter. (Plus, it's one of my favorite articles I've read in Wired so I really wanted to use it as a bookmark.) The article discusses the strategies used to break this cipher, some of which, such as frequency analysis, we have talked about in class. It's also just fascinating to read about the Oculists and their history.

I was just followed on Twitter by someone from Blockstream, which looks like a start-up based on crypto currencies like Bitcoin. Fascinating.

"A few months ago, an officer for the Byron Police Department in Georgia made a routine traffic stop equipped with an unusual piece of technology: Google Glass."

We'll give Mailvelope (the webmail encryption tool) a try in class tomorrow. See Step Three for instructions.

Security researchers have successfully broken one of the most secure encryption algorithms, 4096-bit RSA, by listening - yes, with a microphone - to a computer as it decrypts some encrypted data.

Little Brother, the entire book, on a poster.

Here's a podcast interview with Bill Binney and Ladar Levison, both featured in Citizenfour. Binney was the former NSA crypto expert we saw testifying in the film a couple of times, and Levison was the guy who ran the secure email service Lavabit that he felt compelled to shut down.

Ladar Levison and William Binney each paid the price for a moral stand against the U.S. government. And your digital privacy is slightly better for it.