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Article #675Re: "Sneakers" -- action/adventure movie about Cryptography
From: John Nagle
Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1992 20:03
Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1992 20:03
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karn@qualcom.qualcomm.com (Phil Karn) writes:
>In article <6395@vtserf.cc.vt.edu>, ranck@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Wm. L. Ranck) writes:
>|> I saw a preview of "Sneakers" when I was at the movies about a week ago.
>|> In a couple of scenes they showed groups of letters on a screen rapidly
>|> changing (sort of like a slot machine) and resolving into words. Now this
>|> bothered me. The space characters were already in place! In other words
>|> it was obvious from the cyphertext what the length of each word was.
>|> Pretty poor encryption scheme that.
>It sounds like that scene was written by the same guy who did the
>climax of "War Games". Remember how the computer (Joshua?) cracked the
>missile launch code ONE CHARACTER AT A TIME?
The idea probably came from one of the early Bond movies, where
Bond uses a suitcase-sized (this is a '60s movie) safe-opening machine
which worked that way.
John Nagle
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Newsgroups: sci.crypt Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!csus.edu!netcom.com!nagle From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) Subject: Re: "Sneakers" -- action/adventure movie about Cryptography Message-ID: <b1nn#rn.nagle@netcom.com> Date: Sat, 05 Sep 92 20:03:10 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) References: <1391@eouk18.eoe.co.uk> <6395@vtserf.cc.vt.edu> <1992Sep4.205842.12303@qualcomm.com> Lines: 19