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Mozilla made a game to teach you the basics of encryption
Sure, people will tell you that encryption is important to maintaining your online privacy, but how do you wrap your head around the concept? Mozilla wants to help. It's introducing a web-based game, Codemoji, that illustrates how ciphers work through emoji. Type in a phrase and Codemoji will both shift the letters and replace them with emoji. The challenge, as you might guess, comes when you get your friends to guess the meaning without turning to the Codemoji website. Mozilla stresses that you shouldn't use this as an honest-to-goodness secure communication system (it isn't). However, it should illustrate just why you'd want to protect your chats -- if your friends can't easily read your data, spies and thieves can't either.
GCHQ is using an app to teach kids how to become codebreakers
The next time you need a new Android app to keep the little ones entertained, you should consider turning to the UK's GCHQ intelligence agency. No, really. Infamous for its surveillance capabilities exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the (once) super-secret organisation has now released a kid-friendly tablet app focused on cryptography. Originally developed by GCHQ placement students, the Cryptoy app teaches children about traditional encryption methods such as shift, substitution, Vigenère and Enigma. Youngsters can then apply these techniques to create their own encoded messages and send them on to friends for decryption. Cryptography has come a long way since these classic ciphers were invented, but GCHQ says the basic principles are still relevant for modern code breakers. It's also planning an iOS version for next year, so if your kids are using an iPad they shouldn't be left out for too long. Passing notes around in class will never be the same again.
New 'nano-code' could help fight banknote forgery by embedding invisible QR-style ciphers
We've all seen (and probably used) QR codes at some point. And, handy as they are for quick linking to apps, or value added content etc, there's usually not much else going on. Unless you're one of the team at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, that is, who have created a tiny version of the quadrilateral-codes that could be used to spot counterfeit money. The invention uses nanoparticles combined with blue and green fluorescent ink, and can be sprayed onto surfaces such as glass, plastic film, or of course, pictures of American presidents. The nano-code remains invisible until placed under a near-infrared laser, making it ideal for helping spot legit bank notes. The creators say they have done significant wear tests, which suggest that it's durable, but they also accept that eventually criminal technology could eventually catch up, in the constant cat and mouse game between mandated money producers and forgers. Whether there'd be links to the Benjamin Franklin Wiki page is unclear.
Credit card-sized stylus in the works at Quirky
Quirky is a design shop that uses ideas from a crowd of contributors and influencers to create new products. In the past, it's come up with some incredibly useful Apple-related accessories like the US$12.99 Power Curl, which has made its inventor almost $80,000 in royalties. Now the company is evaluating a new idea -- a touchscreen stylus called the Cipher (expected price $4) that fits in your wallet like a credit card. That's because it is a credit card, made with a capacitive material that acts just like your finger or a more traditional stylus. When you want to draw on your iPhone or iPad, you grab the Cipher from your wallet and go to town. There's less chance of losing the Cipher like a regular stylus, and the fact that it will be sold in a 2-pack means you can always have at least one in your wallet. At this point, Cipher's still in the product evaluation phase, but keep your eyes open for the clever flat stylus in the near future.
Brits, your government needs you to solve this puzzle
Spare a thought for the British intelligence services. Every time they come up with a clever recruitment drive, their efforts are hampered by yet another off-putting death scene in a certain long-running spy drama. But relax, this particular ciphered job advert is entirely safe. It's been put out by the UK's monitoring service, GCHQ, which is altogether more 9 to 5 than MI5. You simply need to figure out the keyword buried in that daunting grid of characters, submit it via the 'canyoucrackit' link below, and a happy career in headphones and Herman Miller could be yours. On the other hand, people who claim to have beaten the puzzle seem underwhelmed by the response: all it got them, they say, was a shot at a £25k per year position that was already being openly advertised on the web. But, who knows, maybe those guys only think they cracked it?
ARG, we can't believe we wasted time on that
Sneaky marketers take note: Joystiq is likely to become entangled in elaborate and possibly regrettable alternate reality games on slow news days. Today, we received an unmarked USB storage device in a mysterious, unmarked envelope. The drive held a simple text file, with the following words: Cryptography; Isotope; Philanthropy; Hydrogen; Ember; Rebirth. Oh, this one's easy! Cryptography; Isotope; Philanthropy; Hydrogen; Ember; Rebirth. Cipher! But for what? An audio file embedded on the same drive offered only some electronic voices, a sequence of letters and numbers read by a female voice -- M O D [sound of 3 chimes] Z Z Z J N Q R Y D 3 F R P -- and some words spoken by a man: "What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also," followed by, "Don't believe everything you see." The identity of the man speaking may be impossible to determine, but you might recognize the person he's quoting initially: Julius Caesar. Using a Caesar cipher, and assuming that "mod" and the sound of 3 chimes signaled a shift of 3 letters, we ended up with "W W W G K N O V A 6 COM." That led to a mysterious website, featuring a small, adjustable television set.
3G GSM encryption cracked in less than two hours
Looks like all that GSM code-cracking is progressing faster than we thought. Soon after the discovery of the 64-bit A5/1 GSM encryption flaw last month, the geniuses at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science went ahead and cracked the KASUMI system -- a 128-bit A5/3 algorithm implemented across 3G networks -- in less than two hours. If you must know, the method applied is dubbed 'related-key sandwich attack' where multiple values of known differentials are processed through the first seven rounds of KASUMI, then using resulting quartets that are identified sharing key differences, subkey materials can be obtained in round eight to build up the 128-bit key. Sure, it's hardly snooping-on-the-go at this speed, but worryingly this was only an 'unoptimized implementation... on a single PC.' At the same time, the paper condemns the presumably red-faced GSM Association for moving from MISTY -- a more computationally-expensive but much stronger predecessor algorithm -- to KASUMI. Guess we'll just have to stick with Skype.
Ruby Cipher HDD kit provides AES 256-bit hardware encryption
Addonics is good for providing über-secure storage options, and this one does a fine job of keeping that legacy alive. The Ruby Cipher hard drive kit shows lots of love to any 2.5-inch SATA drive that you've got laying around, and once you slip it in there, you can rest assured that only you (and maybe your ghost) will see what files are within. The enclosure itself comes with inbuilt eSATA / SATA connectors, and there's also a SATA direct bridge to "isolate the SATA hard drive power and data connectors from the wears and tears incurred in some other removable SATA hard drive systems." Of course, you'll also find 256-bit AES hardware encryption, with a bundled flash key included to unlock the doors to your deepest, darkest secrets. Shame there's no price listed, but you know this level of security won't run you cheap.
Sony develops new CLEFIA DRM
Shocking news here: Sony's conjuring up yet another proprietary format instead of just making nice with the ones already available. Now that you've picked yourself up off the floor, we're sure you'll be delighted to know that Sony has developed another form of DRM, which we're sure will be completely and utterly dismantled before it has even a chance to really catch on. Nevertheless, the CLEFIA block cipher algorithm reportedly delivers "advanced copyright protection and authentication," and is slated to be used in various forms of "digital data distribution" including music and images. Sony is gloating that its newfangled DRM technology is extremely efficient and quick, but we can't help but chuckle at the "state-of-the-art cryptanalysis techniques" which Sony claims will "achieve sufficient immunity against known (keyword: known) cryptanalytic attacks." Of course, Sony seems to be shooting in the dark with this stuff at the moment, but it does hope to implement it in "AV devices," smart cards, and mobile devices if anyone will take 'em up on it.[Via TGDaily]
