ShmooCon 2014: How Bletchley Park Pioneered Cryptography and the Computer Revolution 🖥️

In the darkest days of WWII, a small team assembled at Bletchley Park solved two problems and set a new course for computers and cryptography - fast computers, and secure communications can both be traced back to one of the ugliest estates in London suburbia, where Alan Turing, Max Newman, Tommy Flowers, and others hacked their way through the German High Command. The British released the General Report on Tunny in 2000, and since then have rebuilt a Colossus and Enigma Bombe and opened the Park as a museum. We discuss the cryptanalysis of the Enigma and Lorentz ciphers, historical exploits as well as modern exploits, and their direct connections to the modern crypto systems and highspeed computers on which the world as we know it is built.

Born to hippies in the late 60's, Benjamin Gatti grew up in California and taught himself electronics and software, travelled the World in the 90's, married abroad, and settled in Charlotte, North Carolina where he works as an independent software slacker.