Internet History, Technology, and Security - Week 2

History: Dawn of Electronic Computing

What was the Lorenz Machine used to transmit?

• Detailed information between Hitler and his commanders
• Long strategic messages with lots of detail

2. Who is John Forbes Nash and what is he known for?

• A mathematician and founder of modern day Game Theory

3. What did the Polish Cipher Bureau give to the British?

• A technique for breaking encoded German Enigma messages

4. What was a weakness of the Enigma machine?

• It could never encode a letter as itself

5. Why was the Enigma machine so important to the German strategy during World-War II?

• World War II was widely distributed and could not depend on wired telephone and telegraph for communications

• Encrypted wireless communication allowed for a very fast and yet coordinated approach to war

6. What were some factors that allowed Alan Turing to craft a strategy to break coded German messages? (Choose all that apply)

• Many operators would encrypt and send the same short perfunctory message day after day
• Since so much of military communication is quite routine, it made it possible to routinely guess the non-encrypted text

7. What is a Modem used for?

• Connect to a central computer from an office using a normal voice-based telephone line
• Convert data to sound so it can be transmitted over a phone line
• Use a voice-based phone line to transmit data

8. What kind of parts were used to make the Colossus electronic computer?

• Vacuum tubes, relays, switches, and lights
• Hardware that was in common use in telephone switching stations

9. What are leased lines?

• Dedicated telephone lines organizations paid telecom companies monthly to have continuous access to

10. About how many vacuum valves/tubes were there in the Colossosus

• 2500

11. On the Colossus computer what was used to store and repeatedly read the encrypted message text?

• A paper tape that was read using light sensitive tubes

12. What made Bletchley park successful?

13. Who did the Enigma machine belong to?

• The Germans

14. Who created the functional design of the Bombe mechanical computer use to crack Enigma codes at Bletchley Park?

• Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman

15. Where is Bletchley Park located?

• Buckinghamshire, England