Cracking Crypto To Get Into College

Kallahar writes "New Scientist is running a story about a Canadian university who had students break an encrypted message in order to get into college. A good idea to grab a good student, but here in 'Free' America these kids would have been thrown in jail for violating the DMCA ..."

Comments

Re:The DMC is bad enough - you needn't make stuff

[isomeme]

The DMCA doesn't apply when the copyright holder asks you to break the encryption.

Tell that to Felten.

(And yes, the RIAA backed off...but the threat was credible enough that it left the lingering possibility that someone could be prosecuted under the DMCA for breaking encryption when invited to do so, if the inviter disapproves of what they do with the information afterwards.)

Ok, I was bored.

[molo]

I decoded the message. I guess I'm bored. I didn't quite get the numerals in the address though.


TO WIN A SCHOLARSHIP
FROM THE UNIVERSITY
OF LETHBRIDGE

DO THE MATH.

FORMULA:

FIND THE SUM OF ALL DECIMAL
DIGITS APPEARING IN THE NATURAL
NUMBERS FROM ONE TO ONE MILLION
INCLUSIVE.

CONTEST ENTRIES MUST BE
RECEIVED BY DECEMBER 12/31/01

TO ENTER ONLINE: VISIT
WWW.ULETH.CA AND SUBMIT YOUR
ANSWER.

MAIL: SEND YOUR ANSWER, ALONG
WITH YOUR NAME, FULL ADDRESS AND
PHONE NUMBER TO GO FIGURE WHAT
MAGAZINE,108/,93/ LOMBARD AVENUE,
WINNIPEG, MB, R3/B3/B1/.



Computed as follows:

0 + 1,000,000 = 1E6
1 + 999,999 = 1E6
2 + 999,998 = 1E6
...
499,998 + 500,002 = 1E6
499,999 + 500,001 = 1E6

and 500,000 left over.

so, we have 500,000 pairs equaling 1E6, giving 5E5 * 1E6 = 5E11. Add 5E5 left over, and you get your answer of 5.000005E11 = 500000500000.

Confirmed with the following bc program:

total=0;
for(i=0;i<=1000000;i++)
total+=i;
total