[crypto] [Serge.Fehr at cwi.nl: [risc-list] RISC at CWI (Mon Jan 22): Sandy Zabell (Northwestern University) - "Cryptography in WWII"]

[R. Hirschfeld]

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From: Serge Fehr <Serge.Fehr at cwi.nl>
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2017 17:08:40 +0100
Subject: [risc-list] RISC at CWI (Mon Jan 22): Sandy Zabell (Northwestern
 University) - "Cryptography in WWII"

Dear Colleagues,

we would like to announce a RISC Seminar, jointly organized with the CWI 
Machine Learning group, featuring a talk by

    * Sandy Zabell (Northwestern University) *

on

    * The paradox of German high-level cryptography in WWII. *

See below for the abstract. The seminar takes place in the Euler room at 
the Amsterdam Science Park Congress Center, next to CWI, on

          * Monday January 22, 2018, from 11:00 to 12:00. *

See you then and there!

Best regards,
Ronald Cramer, Serge Fehr and Peter GrC<nwald


ABSTRACT:  The title of this talk is the title of Chapter 1 of the 
second volume of the now declassified 1946 US Army Security Agency book 
"European Axis Signal Intelligence", which starts off: German high-level 
cryptographic systems were insecure although brilliantly conceived.
In this talk I discuss the reasons for this paradox based on the 
material in various TICOM documents. (TICOM was the "Target Intelligence 
Committee", a joint UK-US group at the end of WWII tasked with acquiring 
German signals intelligence assets - personnel, equipment, and 
intercepts.) Surprisingly, it turns out that the reasons for this 
meltdown in operational security on the German side are quite simple to 
understand, involving both deficiencies in organization and resistance 
to facing inconvenient truths. Even more surprisingly, many of the 
research cryptologists in both the Wehrmacht and Army were well aware of 
these problems, but their concerns were (fortunately) ignored.


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