Interesting paper about a German cryptanalysis machine that helped break the US M-209 mechanical ciphering machine. The paper contains a good description of how the M-209 works.

Former NSA Director Paul Nakasone has joined the board of OpenAI.

Beautiful astronomical photo.

The memorial service for Ross Anderson will be held on Saturday, at 2:00 PM BST. People can attend remotely on Zoom. (The passcode is “L3954FrrEF”.)

Interesting summary of various ways to derive the public key from digitally signed files. Normally, with a signature scheme, you have the public key and want to know whether a given signature is valid. But what if we instead have a message and a signature, assume the signature is valid, and want to know which public key signed it? A rather delightful...

There has been a lot of toxicity in the comments section of this blog. Recently, we’re having to delete more and more comments. Not just spam and off-topic comments, but also sniping and personal attacks. It’s gotten so bad that I need to do something. My options are limited because I’m just one person, and this website is free, ad-free, and anonymous....