So when he DM’d me to say that he had “a hell of a story”—promising “one-time pads! 8-bit computers! Flight attendants smuggling floppies full of random numbers into South Africa!”—I responded.
Ha ha ha. Yes, that was literally my very short pitch to Steven about Tim Jenkin's story!
The actual DM: "I think this has the makings of a hell of a story: https://blog.jgc.org/2024/09/cracking-old-zip-file-to-help-o... If you want I can connect you with Tim Jenkin. One time pads! 8-bit computers! Flights attendants smuggling floppies full of random numbers into South Africa!"
This was a great read, thank you for inspiring it! I also did not realize it was you who led the petition for the UK to apologize to Turing, what an achievement.
You're quoted at the end as saying, "The code itself is a historical document". That sort of electrified me as I began thinking about what other historical code is out there in need of preservation. I'm fascinated with stuff like this, toolkits meant to be used in the field with little room for incremental development. Tracking this kind of stuff down seems like a fun hobby.
No, I did not. I threw quite a lot of compute power at it using bkcrack (CPU) and hashcat (GPU) but never found out what it was. It was definitely not TIMBOBIMBO, sadly!
Interesting how the PKZIP password-protected compressed file is now easily decrypted in <5 minutes, but the original one-time pad is still as mathematically robust as ever.
We could have had a very different history if they'd used DES or RC2 for encryption!
Funny but also thought-provoking! When did the verb "encipher" give way to "encrypt," and why? I might enjoy reading a well-researched piece on that subject.
So basically encipher was never used in the context of the web. And the web is what made encrypt popular separate from encipher. It does look like maybe encipher was possibly going to take off but encrypt stepped on its head.
The tech side of this is really cool but I'd also like to read more about the non-tech stuff. I wonder if the sympathetic Dutch flight attendant is still alive or the guys who actually carried the Trojan horse books to Mandela.
I think it was the fishing trip with Mandela and then-Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk in 1990 that ended apartheid. Specifically when one of de Klerk's people got a hook in his hand, and a Mandela person cleaned and bandaged it. After that trip Apartheid was finally broken.
What actually ended apartheid was international pressure and the white government's fear of a civil war. Economically isolated and vastly outnumbered, the apartheid government would have been completely removed from the country and had their property seized.
My understanding is Mandela was a respected leader who was willing to play ball and facilitate a peaceful transition where the white leadership got to keep all their property. That's why there's still massive economic inequality in SA today. Not to say Mandela wasn't admirable or that he didn't suffer, but it was a conscious choice to avoid outright military conflict at the cost of preserving an implicit racial hierarchy.
While it certainly involved a lot of people doing the right thing, that peaceful transition was absolutely incredible and I really do think that's why non-South Africans look on Mandela so fondly. If you'd told me everything about the Apartheid right up until its collapse and then said "Ok, the ANC basically win, gain power, what do you think happens?", I'd struggle to think of any scenario where there wasn't incredible bloodshed or upheaval to the point of ruining lives beyond measure. There was so much bad blood. You'd assume that at least the people who were in charge, the people who ran the show, surely would've saw a grim end. Not even property seizures? . Somehow, Mandela led an effort that just rose above that. He probably prevented a lot of pain just by not giving into such things.
To me, the peaceful transition is the achievement. It is the amazing part of it.
The existence of a viable ANC was arguably pretty important to the international pressure, though. Absent a viable opposition, you probably do not _want_ to exert _too_ much pressure on a rogue state, however nasty, because its only response is to either go full autarky, or collapse into complete chaos.
Take North Korea, say, another extremely nasty rogue nuclear-armed state. Even if there was a level of pressure that the international community could put on North Korea that would collapse it (it's already pretty far down the 'autarky' route), you can see that countries would be unwilling to go quite _that_ far, because there's no viable opposition and it would likely collapse in a very dangerous and ugly way.
So when he DM’d me to say that he had “a hell of a story”—promising “one-time pads! 8-bit computers! Flight attendants smuggling floppies full of random numbers into South Africa!”—I responded.
Ha ha ha. Yes, that was literally my very short pitch to Steven about Tim Jenkin's story!
The actual DM: "I think this has the makings of a hell of a story: https://blog.jgc.org/2024/09/cracking-old-zip-file-to-help-o... If you want I can connect you with Tim Jenkin. One time pads! 8-bit computers! Flights attendants smuggling floppies full of random numbers into South Africa!"
I didn't know it was you who led the charge for the apology to Turing. Thank you!
This was a great read, thank you for inspiring it! I also did not realize it was you who led the petition for the UK to apologize to Turing, what an achievement.
You're quoted at the end as saying, "The code itself is a historical document". That sort of electrified me as I began thinking about what other historical code is out there in need of preservation. I'm fascinated with stuff like this, toolkits meant to be used in the field with little room for incremental development. Tracking this kind of stuff down seems like a fun hobby.
Did you end up discovering the original password to the zip file? (was it, as I'd hope, `TIMBOBIMBO` ?)
No, I did not. I threw quite a lot of compute power at it using bkcrack (CPU) and hashcat (GPU) but never found out what it was. It was definitely not TIMBOBIMBO, sadly!
I also ended up sponsoring the bkcrack project because the maintainer added a new option for me: https://github.com/kimci86/bkcrack/pull/126
How much was "quite a lot"?
I did a pass with bkcrack. The password is over 13 char.
bkcrack.exe -k 98e0f009 48a0b11a c70f8499 -r 1..18 ?p bkcrack 1.7.0 - 2024-05-26 [11:07:33] Recovering password length 0-6... length 7... length 8... length 9... length 10... length 11... length 12... length 13...
I can tell you it's over 14 ?p, and over 16 ?u?d, and over 17 ?u.
Though, you could argue it was a 16 bit computer, of course :)
(It was an 8088, essentially an 8086 with an 8 bit data bus, but 16bit registers and 20bit address bus).
Interesting how the PKZIP password-protected compressed file is now easily decrypted in <5 minutes, but the original one-time pad is still as mathematically robust as ever.
We could have had a very different history if they'd used DES or RC2 for encryption!
>Working in the woodshop, he crafted mockups of the large keys that could unlock the prison doors.
I got to here before realising this is the same guy portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe in Escape From Pretoria. Great film.
https://archive.is/yK8Jb
You know it's _proper_ vintage crypto code because it uses the now very unfashionable word 'encipher'.
Funny but also thought-provoking! When did the verb "encipher" give way to "encrypt," and why? I might enjoy reading a well-researched piece on that subject.
I don't know why but here's when: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=encipher%2Cenc...
So basically encipher was never used in the context of the web. And the web is what made encrypt popular separate from encipher. It does look like maybe encipher was possibly going to take off but encrypt stepped on its head.
Wow. Apparently that's when AES and Triple DES were introduced, which can't be coincidental.
Why is it unfashionable? I quite like it.
I've no idea why it died out, but it certainly seems to have.
A longer version is here
https://github.com/Vulacode/Articles/blob/main/Talking%20To%...
The tech side of this is really cool but I'd also like to read more about the non-tech stuff. I wonder if the sympathetic Dutch flight attendant is still alive or the guys who actually carried the Trojan horse books to Mandela.
What an amazing story!
Maybe in the future we can also see the code that ended democracy. (The FB source code).
This is paywalled; how can I read it?
https://archive.is/yK8Jb
Most paywalled articles on HN will have an archive.is link in the comments, pvg posted one here.
I think it was the fishing trip with Mandela and then-Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk in 1990 that ended apartheid. Specifically when one of de Klerk's people got a hook in his hand, and a Mandela person cleaned and bandaged it. After that trip Apartheid was finally broken.
What actually ended apartheid was international pressure and the white government's fear of a civil war. Economically isolated and vastly outnumbered, the apartheid government would have been completely removed from the country and had their property seized.
My understanding is Mandela was a respected leader who was willing to play ball and facilitate a peaceful transition where the white leadership got to keep all their property. That's why there's still massive economic inequality in SA today. Not to say Mandela wasn't admirable or that he didn't suffer, but it was a conscious choice to avoid outright military conflict at the cost of preserving an implicit racial hierarchy.
While it certainly involved a lot of people doing the right thing, that peaceful transition was absolutely incredible and I really do think that's why non-South Africans look on Mandela so fondly. If you'd told me everything about the Apartheid right up until its collapse and then said "Ok, the ANC basically win, gain power, what do you think happens?", I'd struggle to think of any scenario where there wasn't incredible bloodshed or upheaval to the point of ruining lives beyond measure. There was so much bad blood. You'd assume that at least the people who were in charge, the people who ran the show, surely would've saw a grim end. Not even property seizures? . Somehow, Mandela led an effort that just rose above that. He probably prevented a lot of pain just by not giving into such things.
To me, the peaceful transition is the achievement. It is the amazing part of it.
The existence of a viable ANC was arguably pretty important to the international pressure, though. Absent a viable opposition, you probably do not _want_ to exert _too_ much pressure on a rogue state, however nasty, because its only response is to either go full autarky, or collapse into complete chaos.
Take North Korea, say, another extremely nasty rogue nuclear-armed state. Even if there was a level of pressure that the international community could put on North Korea that would collapse it (it's already pretty far down the 'autarky' route), you can see that countries would be unwilling to go quite _that_ far, because there's no viable opposition and it would likely collapse in a very dangerous and ugly way.
You don't even need to use hypothetical examples. Libya, Iraq, arguably Syria, Yemen, Yugoslavia.
Though to be fair none of these had happened prior to apartheid.
That might have been the symbolic last drop that made the bucket overflow.
Sometimes all it takes is for the right people to see at the right time that their opponent bleeds just the same red blood as they do.