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WWII Colossus Codecracker Outdone by a German

superglaze writes "The Colossus codecracker contest was a short-lived ordeal. Not only has it been outdone in a cipher-breaking challenge, but — irony of ironies — it was beaten by a German! From the story: 'The winner was Joachim Schüth, from Bonn, who completed the task using software he wrote himself. "[Schüth] cracked the most difficult code yesterday," said the museum's spokesperson on Friday. "We're absolutely delighted. He used specially written software for the challenge. Colossus is still chugging away, as we got the signals late. Yesterday the atmospheric conditions were such that we couldn't get good signals.'"

3 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Time travel hero wannabe by magarity · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now I just need a copy of the software on my laptop and a time warping wormhole to 1942.
     
    Just have to remember not to ask for "pepsi, free"...

  2. racism? by RingDev · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I could understand a stereotype tag, even a nationalism tag, but racism? Are the taggers implying that people from German are of different races than the rest of the world?

    I RTFA and there is nothing racist in there. Just that a guy from Germany cracked the code using some software written in Ada.

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  3. Re:wait wait wait. by moogied · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Sure! :) The section of the law(if you want to look it up) is Section 202c StGB. The law basically say it is illegal to possess, distrubute, sell, or *create*, any software which has the ability to displace security. Such as cryptography.. he "uses his own program" to decrypt the message. Which in turn displaced its security..

    Now I do not really believe this is illegal under german law.. but I am saying that I would not be suprised if someone tried to charge him.

    --
    So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."