I found this interesting source of encryption/security yarns
http://www.kids-o-rama.com/quicklinks/crypto.htm
Here is one of the stories published by the BBC (with a heap of others) at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_254000/254236.stm
Sci/Tech
January 13, 1999
Teenager's email code is a cracker
The prize judges could not completely understand the "brilliant" code
Making your email secret is now 30 times faster, but the innovation has come
not from a multinational computer [company] but a schoolgirl from Blarney,
Ireland.
Sarah Flannery, 16, has developed a brand new mathematical procedure for
encrypting internet communication.
"It is a public-key algorithm and is based on matrices," her father told BBC
News Online. Dr David Flannery is a mathematics lecturer at Cork Institute
of Technology, Ireland.
"Sarah has a very good understanding of the mathematical principles
involved, but to call her a genius or a prodigy is overstated and she
doesn't want that herself.
Encryption technology codes internet messages to keep email and online
commerce secure.
_International job offers_
But her number-crunching feat is undoubtedly remarkable and won her the top
prize at the Irish Young Scientists and Technology Exhibition. She did a
period of work experience with Baltimore Technologies last April. And her
cryptography skills also took her to Fort Worth, Texas, as the winner of an
Intel prize. International job and scholarship offers have since flooded in,
said Dr Flannery.
Even when high security levels are required, her code can encrypt a letter
in just one minute - a widely used encryption standard called RSA would take
30 minutes. "But she has also proven that her code is as secure as RSA,"
says Dr Flannery. "It wouldn't be worth a hat of straw if it was not."
Ms Flannery currently has a bad cold and has not had time to consider the
advice of the judges to patent the code. "She wouldn't mind being rich but
she wants to stress the great joy that the project has given her," says Dr
Flannery. She may publish the work to make it freely available to all.
Her code is called Cayley-Purser after Arthur Cayley, a 19th century
Cambridge expert on matrices, and Michael Purser, a cryptographer from
Trinity College, Dublin, who provided inspiration for Ms Flannery.
* * * * * * *
Bill Kerr wrote on 26 February 1999 14:57
|re encryption: another reason Government doesn't like it is that it opens
|the possibility for a tax free global black market
|(Tim May, crypto anarchy, digital money, anonymous networks, digital
|pseudonames, black markets, collapse of government)
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