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Colossus Cracks Again

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Nov 15, 2007 08:37 AM
from the now-yer-playing-with-power dept.
Encryption Security Communications Hardware
BOfH writes "The BBC is reporting that following a 14-year rebuild project, the Colossus computer is once again cracking codes at Bletchley Park." They will crack WWII-era encrypted messages, and compete against modern PCs. Fun stuff for crypto nerds and history buffs.
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Submission: Colossus starts cracking codes again by Anonymous Coward
[+] WWII Colossus Codecracker Outdone by a German 182 comments
superglaze writes "The Colossus codecracker contest was a short-lived ordeal. Not only has it been outdone in a cipher-breaking challenge, but — irony of ironies — it was beaten by a German! From the story: 'The winner was Joachim Schüth, from Bonn, who completed the task using software he wrote himself. "[Schüth] cracked the most difficult code yesterday," said the museum's spokesperson on Friday. "We're absolutely delighted. He used specially written software for the challenge. Colossus is still chugging away, as we got the signals late. Yesterday the atmospheric conditions were such that we couldn't get good signals.'"
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  • The real question is.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by zappepcs (820751) on Thursday November 15 2007, @08:39AM (#21362919) Journal
    will it be able to detect dupes?

  • How long (Score:3, Funny)

    by Steeltalon (734391) on Thursday November 15 2007, @08:40AM (#21362925)
    until someone ports Quake to it?

  • Link to Bletchley Park (Score:5, Informative)

    by fantomas (94850) on Thursday November 15 2007, @08:41AM (#21362943)
    At least provide a link to the Bletchley Park museum itself!

    http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ [bletchleypark.org.uk]

    It's a great visit. Go check it out. They don't get a lot of funding so they are very dependent on visitors (and volunteers if you live nearby) to help keep things going. They had to sell off some of their land recently to keep going (this is now getting turned into a local housing estate).

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not all of us are fortunate neough to be able to travel to London. But earlier this year when I was obsessively reading about Colossus, I contented myself with Paul Gannon's Colossus: Bletchley Park's Greatest Secret [amazon.com] . It does a great job of explaining how that whole big centre of operations worked. It made me wonder, though, how similar today's military codebreaking centres like Ft. Mead are in terms of comaraderie.

      • Re:Link to Bletchley Park (Score:5, Funny)

        by Bloke down the pub (861787) on Thursday November 15 2007, @09:08AM (#21363275)

        Not all of us are fortunate neough to be able to travel to London.
        Not a problem, it's in Milton Keynes.
        • Nobody who's ever been to Milton Keynes would say it wasn't a problem.

          One of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen was Milton Keynes by the rear-view mirror.

      • ... It made me wonder, though, how similar today's military codebreaking centres like Ft. Mead are in terms of comaraderie ...

        What military code breaking centres? There are none!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pev (2186)
      I had an amazing day there a few years back - one of the most amazing things was that many of the volunteers were connected to Bletchley Park originally and you could talk to them to get their stories first hand. There are very few opportunities for such things these days and well worth taking the opportunity to meet them (and have a nice cup of tea!)

    • They had to sell off some of their land recently to keep going (this is now getting turned into a local housing estate).

      To be fair, they probably had a lot more land than they needed. I did my apprenticeship there in the 1970s; there was a huge field at the back where we had a whole pile of aviation navigation aids set up, as well as far more squat brick-built huts than anybody could want in peacetime. Of course, the issue with selling off the land is that it means they're living on capital rather than revenue, which I suppose is a problem.

  • Not as fast as it used to be. (Score:5, Funny)

    by RandoX (828285) on Thursday November 15 2007, @08:44AM (#21362961)
    The machine is only running at about 30% of the speed it did originally. It appears that their ISP is throttling their packets for some reason. Comcast cited DMCA violations as the reason for the packet shaping.

  • And how is this different. . . (Score:3, Interesting)

    by smooth wombat (796938) on Thursday November 15 2007, @08:44AM (#21362963) Homepage Journal
    than this article [slashdot.org] from 2 days ago?
  • Any word on the Debian port ?
  • Oh, is this anything to do with that earlier RIPA all-your-keys-are-belong-to-us story?
  • I'm a mechanical engineer, and I demand the construction of a full scale Babbage engine, simply for bragging rights. ...grumble grumble...fucking EE's think the sun shines out their asses...grumble...

    • Re:I Want a Babbage Engine, Dammit! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BigBadBus (653823) on Thursday November 15 2007, @09:26AM (#21363525) Homepage
      There is a full scale replica, at London's Science Museum, made by their own technicians. Its a lovely mesh of bronze and brass cogs and gears, and yes, it does work. I worked there years ago and was told something interesting: Bill Gates funded the construction of the display model on the condition that afterwards, they build him one too. Which I presume they did.
      • It's also interesting to note that Baggabes machine didn't work either ..

        "Bill Gates funded the construction of the display model on the condition that afterwards, they build him one too"

        Do you have a citation for this interesting recollection ..

      • Bill Gates funded the construction of the display model on the condition that afterwards, they build him one too. Which I presume they did.

        I don't know about Bill Gates, but when I was last there (about a year ago) the second one was at an advanced stage of construction. I got talking to a man who was oiling the big steam engine and said I'd noticed they were building a second one. His response was, "Actually, I'm building a second one". His explanation was that when they'd built the first one, enough parts had been machined for two and now they were putting together the second one to go to an American museum.

        • Sorry, this is rubbish. It is a full sized replica of how the difference engine/machine would have looked. I was told the information by a security guard with whom I was friendly in the museum. This would have been in 2003, when I worked as an assistant at the Titanic artefact exhibition.
    • Do you mean a Difference Engine?

  • Reading the RSS title ... (Score:3)

    by StarfishOne (756076) on Thursday November 15 2007, @09:18AM (#21363413)
    I initially had this amazing vision in my mind of a huge Greek mythical hero in the sky ... with a huge hammer (perhaps borrowed from Thor!) and an anvil to match... picking up numbers and cracking them with huge force one by one.... causing all kinds of wild lightning like effects that scared all mortals on the ground.


    Then I realized I have some code to debug. ;-)

      • For the record: I've never even touched WoW.

        The only visuals I've seen of it were on TV or in a YouTube movie...

        I've just got my creative moments every now and then! ;P

  • The first message cracked (Score:4, Funny)

    by albeit unknown (136964) on Thursday November 15 2007, @09:20AM (#21363435)
    Be sure to drink your ovaltine
  • ...does it run Linux?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sznupi (719324)
      (I was shocked BTW; so many comments, not one with the _truly_ relevant question...)
    • Probably not ... It's is not Turing Complete, it was designed and built for one purpose (but turned out to be amazingly flexible)

      It could theoretically be rebuilt to run Linux... but the boot times would be a bit slow? The nearest thing it has to a clock speed is the input rate (that was the limiting factor in decoding) normally 5000 characters/second, was run up to 9700 c/s but it effectively did parallel processing so....

    • no but it'll run netbsd ;-)
  • I, for one, welcome our restored cryptography overlords.
  • I thought Harvey Keitel [nndb.com] captured an enigma machine from U-571 [imdb.com] 2000 .. :)
      • "Colossus wasn't used against Enigma"

        Don't be a bloody pedant, the work on cracking Enigma went into designing Colossus. Who's going to play Alan Turing [slashdot.org] in the movie, Jeff Goldblum [imdb.com], or no wait, Turing was a woofter, it would have to be Harvey Fierstein [imdb.com].

        Incidentally, Goldblum got the part of Seth Brundle in the Fly [imdb.com] because he once played James Watson [nobelprize.org] in a BBC documtary, once a mad scientist always a mad scientist appariently .. :)

        was Re:didn't Harvey Keitel crack Enigma

  • Pedant (Score:2, Informative)

    by martin (1336)
    OK so I was there a few months ago and it is indeed an impressive beast - it's HUGE. About the size of a small data centre.

    Also is doesn't crack the codes, merely gives the key to crack the codes from Enigma machines. Needs a separate machine to run the de-cypher...
  • I believe that Colossus was largely built from telephone exchange parts. It was probably mostly Plessey exchange registers. On the old exchanges, even with slow rotary dialling, if you dialled a number really fast, then it had to be stored somewhere while the selectors turned. The storage was also required when making long distance calls which could take a while to set up.
  • ...my father worked somewhere in Bletchley Park spying on the Japanese, now I'm working in Japan on cryptography-related subjects, and talking to someone working in a division of GCHQ.
  • Colossus ran as fast as the tape reader could scan and compare tapes. They estimated that the unit could do as much as 10,000 to 15,000 Characters Per Second (CPS). Material issues kept the machine running dependably at 5,000 CPS. As the story goes, the inventor cranked the tape scanner up to 10,000 CPS and the paper tape failed, sending ribbons flying across the room. At 60MPH, paper flies very fast!
  • Everything I know about World War II crypto I learned from Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse [wikipedia.org].
      • I liked the book better. I'm still curious if the choice of the name "Colossus" was a coincedence, or a nod to the truth. Bletchley Park was only revealed in the 70's, but the book was published in 1966. But the author, D.F. Jones [wikipedia.org], was a WWII naval commander...
      • I wouldn't get your hopes up. There is something "pandering to the masses" about modern mainstream film making that will kill any chance of a remake having the seriously negative ending of the original.

        When Dr. Forbin says "Never!" he tries to project some hope but his face shows that he realizes it's probably futile and that mankind will have the "peace" they have long sought after.

        Only on Colossus's terms.

        Goddamn that movie was scary.

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