PGP CTO Blog

Three years ago, I wrote a CTO Blog about saving Colossus, one of the world's first computers, which was built at and is still housed at Bletchley Park. In the last three years Colossus has been saved, but still needs more help.

The museums at Bletchley Park house a number of pieces of computing history, the most important of which is Colossus. (Check my previous CTO Corner for details about Colossus.) We at PGP Corporation are happy to announce that we've started an initiative, along with IBM, of high-tech companies to help create a permanent endowment for the museums.

This is important because it is a true milestone of computing history. Colossus has been rebuilt as the world's first electronic, programmable computers. It's not a replica! The machine that you are reading this on is a distant descendent of Colossus. It is also important because Alan Turing helped design Colossus, so it has that connection to the theoretical beginnings of computer science.

Anyone who works in high tech owes their job to Colossus, but also to the way it was treated after the war. Andy Kessler of The New York Times wrote about this in the "Wall Street Wired" blog on April 19, 2007 in the article, “A Colossus Mistake" Colossus was dismantled and shrouded in secrecy for decades.

There are also rebuilds of the famous Bombe machines that broke the Enigma cipher machines running at Bletchley Park. The site has become a living recreation of the creation of the information world.

We need your help, too. We have set up a web site at (http://www.pgp.com/stationx/) where you can contribute to the Bletchley Park Museums through PayPal. If you contribute more than £50, we'll send you a commemorative t-shirt.

If you work for a company that wants to help, we need companies to help, too. Contact me for details.

The t-shirt has a cryptographic puzzle printed on it. That puzzle is a hard one. It is an actual Lorentz machine encryption that the Colossus team has found for us. The greatest tech minds of that era created Lorentz to protect the communications of the German high command. Others of those greatest tech minds created Colossus to break it. There are relatively few resources on the web to work with Colossus and Lorentz, and you'll have to start with research. If you break it, drop me a line with your Lorentz settings. I'll send something to the first few people who do.

To get you in the mood, I have a much simpler puzzle. This is an Engima encryption I created. It's both very easy to solve and harder than you think. I used a number of friends as QA, and the hardest problem is to get an Enigma simulator that doesn't suck.

Secret! Settings for 9 September 2008:
Wheels: IV II V
Rings: GMY
Plugboard: DN GR IS KC QX TM PV HY FW BJ
Setup: DHO GXS
Message: DBPTU YRQJB HWCQW CHAEV HMOII
PGPDU OAKYK FFSUT BVFDH UHOAG QWRCA

The plaintext of this is a relevant quote that Bruce Schneier suggested. The fact that the ciphertext contains "PGP" in it has nothing to do with the time machine I have in the back room and Christopher Marlowe. Really. Just trust me on that. It's a pure coincidence.

In a week or so, I'll post an update here along with instructions on how to operate an Enigma and solve the puzzle.

So please contribute, and get your company to contribute. Sixty-five years ago, Colossus was saving the free world. It's easy to return the favor.

Jon

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