Wall Street

Everyone has heard about the Occupy Wall Street, I think that is too controversial of an issue to comment on. However, Wall Street does relate to cryptology. Think about algorithms. That is one aspect that absolutely fuels Wall Street. Long equations are used instead of the simplistic poly alphabetic substitutions. Of course algorithms are used for ATM's, but particularly online algorithms are used. The encryption process for online websites to make sure your information is secure is simply algorithms. This is the immediate connection between Wall Street and cryptology!

Copiale Cipher

I just came upon a video about the Copiale Cipher. This video includes how they initially thought the text would be decoded, how they were mistaken, how the text was actually deciphered among other things. They discuss what the text says. There were 75,000 characters used in this 105 page book written completely in code. The oddest part about this is that the book is written by eye enthusiasts. It is such an odd field to write in code about, but it is truly the method of decryption and encryption that makes the Copiale Cipher so intriguing.

Click on the link that pops up when you click the words below!
Copiale Cipher

Encryption

There are many methods that contain codes and pertain to computers.  However, I started thinking about hacking computers and how that requires codes.  Think about it, what happens when your computer is hacked?  Well for me, I would have opened an encrypted file or encrypted website.  All of these issues occur from encryption and these issues then all originate from cryptology.  It is interesting to see how many ways cryptology affects our lives.

Can you put a number to how many codes there are in the World?

I was sitting in class, and stated thinking about how may endless possibilities of codes there are. I pondered how many codes there can be. I wanted to find a number for how many codes exist or existed in our society, but that simply isn't possible. I could even come up with a code right now and that would effect the number. I suppose you could classify codes. This would result in saying there are two kinds of codes: Cryptology and Steganography. In many ways you could say that, however, then there are contradictory thoughts. Such as there are subcategories to each of these kinds of codes, and do those count? In the world today you can put a number on almost anything. How many people are there in the world? How much food do we waste? So on and so forth. But isn't it odd when you can't put a number on everything in the world? I kind of love it.

Do you accept?

After reading another post about internet security, I thought more about how relaxed our generation is when using the internet. How many times have you just ignored the "Warnings:..." with a very long list of items in small print. Or how many times to you hit "I Accept these terms and Agreements" without reading one word of the 28 pg. agreement your accepting? I know I do it all the time, and it is terrible. I realized that by hitting agree we accept anything they say. They could say you are now agreeing to let us use any pictures of yours for our billboards, and we accept this! I know everyone says that this is terrible and yet no one changes their behavior, but I figured I would post about it anyways and maybe one person would read at least a paragraph of the "I accept" terms next time to comprehend what exactly they are agreeing to.

Evolution

The world has evolved in millions of ways over the centuries. One of these ways is how cryptologists create codes and how cryptanalysts break them. Within The Code Book, we hear a lot about the on paper work that goes on in previous times to break codes. For example, we know that the frequency analysis took long hours and many records of how many times any given letter occurred. The difference between this way of cracking codes and what is used today is extremely large. Now a days codes are so complex that they are solely through computers. As codes progress they seem to be getting more and more complex and technologically reliant. I am curious as to what will come next. I am also curious to find out exactly how we encrypt things today, because there is no doubt in my mind that the government will move onto another method soon and then we will hear about the methods that are being used at this exact moment.

What can we create that will progress our entire society and be used to keep top secret information hidden? I suppose this will be left up to the masterminds of our world today, and the rest of us will find out in 50 years when they no longer use the method. It never stops amazing me how much we dont know about our government and what systems they use.

Steganography

In this class we talk a great deal about cryptologists and cryptanalysts, however, we have not talked about steganography that recently. Steganography is hiding the existence of a message. This comes from the two words "steganos"and "graphein." These two words mean covered and to write. While keeping this in mind I decided to find out more about steganography. I set out thinking that I would find examples of steganography in the past, instead I found steganography used today. I had no idea that you could download software, find tips, and tools to help you hide files among other things. It was a naive thought to believe that steganography is not used that much, but I am still amazed that it is possible to download information and software off of the website to help with these kinds of things. There was no specific website or software I looked at in particular, but they all seem to have the same goal. So if you are reading this blog and like to hide your files on your computer ( I can't because iI am technologically challenged) you should check out more about this topic!

Yes, I am a loser.

So, I know that it is a Friday night and that I absolutely have better things to be doing on a Friday night, but I just stumbled upon what I think is the coolest thing ever. For those of you who read the short story "The Adventure of Dancing Men" you will think this is cool too. If you go to this website you can create your own dancing men codes. You just type in the plain text and it shows you what the message would look like. It includes the men with flags along with the punctuation dancing men. I seriously encourage everyone to look at this site.

http://www.purplehell.com/riddletools/danceman.htm



P.S. Not only is this awesome but since I found it so early I will finish my blogging early for next week!
       (yes I am a loser)

Anyone looking for a job?

I know that most of these jobs are positions that require a PhD or something along those lines but I thought that this was very interesting. This website has many listings of jobs pertaining to cryptology. Not only are these job offers but they are around the world. These different jobs could be research as well as working with other cryptologists or cryptanalysts. I put the link below just incase other people wanted to check out the website and see what their futures could hold.

http://www.iacr.org/jobs/

Cryptozoology

Did you know there is such a thing as cryptozoology? Well there is. It is the study of imaginary creatures. Another definition is the study of creatures whose existence has not been sustained. I stumbled upon cryptozoology when I was searching about cryptology. Once I saw the definition for cryptozoology I thought that I had to at least comment on it. Its intriguing to me that cryptology can have such a different meaning than cryptology. When I first think of cryptology I think of secret messages in codes. To compare that with creature that don’t necessarily exist is a funny concept for me. I never even knew cryptozoology existed.