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Colossus Cracks Again

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-yer-playing-with-power dept.

BOfH writes "The BBC is reporting that following a 14-year rebuild project, the Colossus computer is once again cracking codes at Bletchley Park." They will crack WWII-era encrypted messages, and compete against modern PCs. Fun stuff for crypto nerds and history buffs.

5 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Link to Bletchley Park by fantomas · · Score: 4, Informative

    At least provide a link to the Bletchley Park museum itself!

    http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

    It's a great visit. Go check it out. They don't get a lot of funding so they are very dependent on visitors (and volunteers if you live nearby) to help keep things going. They had to sell off some of their land recently to keep going (this is now getting turned into a local housing estate).

  2. Re:But... by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 2, Informative

    Probably not ... It's is not Turing Complete, it was designed and built for one purpose (but turned out to be amazingly flexible)

    It could theoretically be rebuilt to run Linux... but the boot times would be a bit slow? The nearest thing it has to a clock speed is the input rate (that was the limiting factor in decoding) normally 5000 characters/second, was run up to 9700 c/s but it effectively did parallel processing so....

    --
    Puteulanus fenestra mortis
  3. Pedant by martin · · Score: 1, Informative

    OK so I was there a few months ago and it is indeed an impressive beast - it's HUGE. About the size of a small data centre.

    Also is doesn't crack the codes, merely gives the key to crack the codes from Enigma machines. Needs a separate machine to run the de-cypher...

    1. Re:Pedant by jeremyp · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not Enigma.

      They used bombes to crack Enigma. Colossus was for a completely different cipher called Lorenz

      http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/machines.rhtm

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
  4. Enoch Root is Not Impressed by Bilby+Baggins · · Score: 2, Informative

    Everything I know about World War II crypto I learned from Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse.