Unlocking History: How Modern Algorithms Break Old Ciphers 🔓

A Virtual talk by Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh. Many old encryption methods are still hard to break today. For instance, cryptanalyzing a short 19th century Playfair cipher is far from trivial, and it is especially difficult when the ciphertexts are short. On the other hand, techniques for breaking historical ciphers have recently made considerable progress with computer-based cryptanalysis methods being successfully applied to break original WWII Enigma messages, as well as the most famous unsolved codes, a 1970 ciphertext sent by the Zodiac Killer. This presentation introduces the most important historical ciphers, and modern techniques to break them with many real-world examples and entertaining slides using Lego brick models, self-drawn cartoons, and animations.