An amateur cryptographer has beaten Colossus in a code-cracking challenge set up to mark the end of a project to rebuild the pioneering computer. The competition saw Colossus return to code-cracking duties for the first time in more than 60 years. The team using Colossus managed to decipher the message just after lunch on 16 November. But before that effort began Bonn-based amateur Joachim Schuth revealed he had managed to read the message. "He has written a suite of software specifically for the challenge," said Andy Clark, one of the founders of the Trust for the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park where Colossus is sited.
News of Mr Schuth's success reached Bletchley Park on Thursday night, said Mr Clark. The target messages, enciphered with a Lorenz S42 machine as used by the German high command, were transmitted by a team of radio enthusiasts in Paderborn, Germany. However, radio reception problems throughout the day on Thursday meant that the British code-cracking team did not get a full copy of the enciphered message until after 1700 GMT. "For that all credit must go to Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Society," said Mr Clark. "They worked tirelessly yesterday."
View: Full Story @ BBC News
News of Mr Schuth's success reached Bletchley Park on Thursday night, said Mr Clark. The target messages, enciphered with a Lorenz S42 machine as used by the German high command, were transmitted by a team of radio enthusiasts in Paderborn, Germany. However, radio reception problems throughout the day on Thursday meant that the British code-cracking team did not get a full copy of the enciphered message until after 1700 GMT. "For that all credit must go to Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Society," said Mr Clark. "They worked tirelessly yesterday."
View: Full Story @ BBC News
Modern processors can be programmed to do whatever you want them to, but at the cost of not doing any specific task very well, hence why we have GPUs to specifically do graphics processing.
Modern processors can be programmed to do whatever you want them to, but at the cost of not doing any specific task very well, hence why we have GPUs to specifically do graphics processing.
I understand that, but a computer 60 years old... ?
From the news section of the challenge web site:
Andy Clark said: "The official run time for Colossus cracking the code was three hours and 35 minutes - we had 45 minutes 'injury time' when we had to replace a valve!" The Cipher Challenge continued tonight for many amateur code breakers still battling to unravel the messages.
The team had major issues with receiving a good copy of the signal from Germany so this delayed the start of the decryption.
~4 hours for a decode doesn't sound too bad to me, even with a valve change.
There is no mention of what time the PC challenger made the decryption or what equipment they used.
However the following is also on the same site:
Tommy Flowers once wound up the paper tape drive motor to see what happened. At 9,600 characters per second the tape burst and flew all over the room at 60 mph! It was decided that 5,000 cps was a safe speed.
At 5,000 cps the interval between sprocket holes is 200 microseconds. In this time Colossus will do up to 100 Boolean calculations simultaneously on each of the five tape channels and across a five character matrix. The gate delay time is 1.2 microseconds which is quite remarkable for very ordinary valves.
It demonstrates the design skills of Tommy Flowers and Allen Coombs who re-engineered most of the Mark 2 Colossus. Colossus is so fast and parallel that a mid-range modern PC programmed to do the same code-breaking task takes as long as Colossus to achieve a result.
Kind Regards
Simon
Last edited by PureLegend on 17 Nov 2007 - 16:56
Yeah hi. That was humour.
Alan Turing should also never be forgotten.
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