William D King- The Struggle between a Hacker and a Cracker
Steven Levy wrote the best book about computer security ever written (he also wrote “Hackers”) explains William D King. The title of that book is “Crypto” and it was published in 2001, not coincidentally around the time when the whole crypto struggle was finally reaching critical mass. People generally regard this as a happy coincidence because crypto had become relevant for everyone at last. Lots of people already knew about crypto stuff but since the terrorist attack on New York City in 2001 there were suddenly enough politicians who cared to put some pressure onto technology companies to do something about cryptography, or rather to limit the use of cryptography. That’s how we got into this mess. Cryptography has always been an arms race between cryptographers and cryptanalysts/hackers/crackers. A cryptanalyst tries to break a cipher. The best way to do that is to find some weakness, which often comes down to finding the right algorithm or the right key size. “Weak” does not always mean “easy”. Sometimes it can be abused at first sight with completely mathematical means and require the assistance of NSA supercomputers for instance. Some ciphers are weak against certain types of attacks but strong against others (e.g., ECC vs side channel). Here is the Struggle between a Hacker and a Cracker: Of course as soon as someone has found a new… Read More »William D King- The Struggle between a Hacker and a Cracker