Practice of coding and decoding messages, and the related science.
Questions tagged [cryptography]
9 questions
46
votes
3 answers
Has it been mathematicaly determined that the Voynich Manuscript is not gibberish?
A post on the CthulhuTech forum makes the following claim about the Voynich Manuscript:
Actually doing abit of digging and the view is very spilt those who feel its a cipher of some kind have shown mathmaticly that its not gibberish. But it can be…
oosterwal
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38
votes
4 answers
Is refusing to decrypt data for the police illegal in England and Wales?
I've been recently downloading PuTTY from the official page and I have noticed a message stating:
LEGAL WARNING: Use of PuTTY, PSCP, PSFTP and Plink is illegal in countries where encryption is outlawed. I believe it is legal to use PuTTY, PSCP,…
MMM
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30
votes
3 answers
The mystery of "Numbers Stations"
Source
From NoiseAddicts:
"Static. Faint voices. Seven slow, monotonous tones. A pause.
Suddenly, you hear music–one of those wind-up songs played by a
child’s toy. The melody repeats three times. A pause. Suddenly, you
hear a female voice…
Oliver_C
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29
votes
3 answers
Did US prohibit the export of the mere description of a cryptographic algorithm?
A Wikipedia page says that in the US
regulations were introduced as part of munitions controls which required licenses to export cryptographic methods (and even their description)
What concrete evidence is there that the US banned the export of…
Fizz
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26
votes
1 answer
Does the NSA build backdoors into encryption algorithms?
There was a lot of suspicion around the design of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) encryption algorithm, which is not used any more for its lack of security, regarding the NSA's involvement in its design and whether they had implemented any back…
jazzdawg
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15
votes
1 answer
Did the NSA pay RSA $10 million to make Dual_EC_DRBG the default in BSafe?
According to this article from Reuters
Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar…
ike
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10
votes
1 answer
Did John Nash decipher code from a large board in the Pentagon?
I was watching the movie, "A Beautiful Mind", in which John Nash walks into the Pentagon, looks at a board having codes and deciphers them.
I am quite skeptical about the way the scene is portrayed in the movie. Did Nash actually decipher such…
Vinoth Kumar C M
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9
votes
2 answers
Can diabetics with pumps be killed from a half mile away?
Black Hat: Lethal Hack and wireless attack on insulin pumps to kill
people Like something straight out of science fiction, an
attacker with a powerful antenna could be up to a half mile away from
a victim yet launch a wireless hack to…
user179700
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3
votes
0 answers
Do Russians need to disclose their encryption keys to the Federal Security Service?
Is it true that in Russia, citizens have an obligation to send copy of all of their private encryption keys to the Federal Security Service (FSB), even without receiving a specific demand?
Update: Someone replied on the…
ArekBulski
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