Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NSA Releases Secret Pre-History of Computers

Posted by samzenpus on from the please-forget-about-that-other-stuff dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The National Security Agency has declassified an eye-opening pre-history of computers used for code-breaking between the 1930s and 1960s. The 344 page report, entitled It Wasn't All Magic: The Early Struggle to Automate Cryptanalysis (pdf), it is available on the Government Attic web site. Government Attic has also just posted a somewhat less declassified NSA compendium from 1993: A Collection of Writings on Traffic Analysis. (pdf)"

9 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Pay no attention by Tokolosh · · Score: 5, Funny

    to the man in the Russian airport.

    --
    Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
    1. Re:Pay no attention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      What man? The media is now reporting that Snowden never made it to Moscow. In fact, they are now reporting that there is no record of a US citizen with that name, anymore. It was all a big misunderstanding. It was just an intelligence training exercise.

  2. First pwned! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Am I crazy for opening a PDF from the NSA?

  3. PDFS by stewsters · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey you guys who are talking about Snowden, download this PDF with some cool additional code! Don't worry about it. I promise we didn't buy exploits from Adobe or Microsoft!

    1. Re:PDFS by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey you guys who are talking about Snowden, download this PDF with some cool additional code! Don't worry about it. I promise we didn't buy exploits from Adobe or Microsoft!

      Why buy what you can get for free?

  4. Of course it wasn't magic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    As we all know it was Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, using a steam powered analog computer to break (and make) secret communications. Case closed, this is clearly more lies by the NSA.

  5. Oh, isn't this convenient... by Seumas · · Score: 5, Funny

    Squirrel!

  6. Re:Broken Link by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Funny

    Got it for you. It is called stuxnet-prehistory.pdf.exe

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  7. Re:Pre History? by JustOK · · Score: 1, Funny

    Who did Herodotus have to fuck to be the father of history?

    --
    rewriting history since 2109