Slashdot Mirror
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 ..."
The cryotography turns out to have been very trivial. Here are the details.
I think this is a good basis for a scholarship and admission. Most other scholarships and admissions are based on self-written essays. At least it is less subjective.
What?
From slashdot:
But from the article:
And from slashdot:
Uh, yeah. Whatever.
Here's a link to the puzzle from the college's website:
http://www.whatmagnet.com/gofigure/index.html
The point of college is to learn the things you have mentioned. Does filling out a college application or writing an entrance essay make you a good CS student? No. It just demonstrates your ability to perform a task involving some thought. Does breaking an encrypted message make you a good CS? No, of course not. But, it DOES show that you have strong skills in mathematics and analytical logic. Don't be so silly in jumping to conclusions.
Why bother.
Since I know scripting languages, am I an elite hacker?
Since I can install linux, am I a sys admin?
Isn't that the general consensus around here?
If anyone's interested in the real story, they should go to this story in the National Post.
/. gets a bad reputation from time to time?)
Amongst other things, it talks about how the code is the first part of the challenge. The coded message leads to a math problem (which is actually kind of fun and has a rather elegant solution). Solve the math problem, and you get into school with the chance to win a scholarship.
Having gone to the site and gone through the decode and solve phases, I can happily report that the "code" isn't really a code at all. As the site hints, it's basically "coded" by being written in base-4. The challenge is really in the math problem, which requires applicants to find the summation of all decimal digits in the sequence of natural numbers from one to one million. While this isn't impossible, it does require some thought and intelligence. I thought it was a great idea for students who liked math and computer science (the problem can also be solved with a simple brute force algorithm) but weren't neccessarily that stellar students nor interested in lengthy University applications.
Heck - I spent an hour coming up with a solution and then verifying it with a quick little Java program. It was fun! Give it a shot!
(As a Troll-y sidenote, I'd like to mention with some degree of bitterness that I submitted this story, except when I did it, I got the facts right. Apparently this warrants a rejection, and irrelevant whining about the DMCA warrants approval. Do you ever wonder why
Actually, it DOES apply. Professor Felten was asked to break it as part of a competition, but was then prosecuted fo it. Also, Dmitry Sklyarov was not asked to break Adobe's encryption, but a precedent was set when Adobe chose not to prosecute him, but the US government decided to prosecute him in federal court because breaking encryption broke the CRIMINAL LAW aspect of the DMCA.
It is definitely feasible that a college student breaking the encryption on an encrypted message, even when specifically asked by his college to break the encryption on a message given to him by his college, would be at risk for prosecution under the DMCA. It is a very broad piece of legislation, the specific wording of which could easily be held up in court in a variety of cases, regardless of whether or not the defendant was asked to break the encryption and whether or not the person that originally encrypted it had a problem with it.
I think they are trying to find students who are more than plain academic nerds. A high school student who has enough knowledge to break an encryption scheme (even if its fairly trivial by todays standard) shows potential. High school does not teach the theory to be proficient in encryption and any student who demonstrates this skill must have put in extra time to learn (which is proof of potential IMHO).
I think that this is a great way to separate bookworms from brilliant people.
The fact that they can break the encryption doesn't make them a computer scientist, but then again a non-computer person can enter university and as long as they have the desire to learn they can leave with a lot of knowledge.
The DMCA is a bad law, but it does NOT prevent anyone from doing cryptography or breaking it. It ONLY applies to circumvention of access control to a COPYRIGHTED WORK. It is copyright law, not encryption law.
I think slashdot is perpetuating misunderstanding about this law, and I think that hurts our cause. Being informed is the first and most important step. Otherwise, we are just clueless zealots.