HW: Week 2 - Cybersecurity - Alan Turing

Who was this man?

• John von Neumann
• Donald Knuth
• Alan Turing
• Tim Berners-Lee

Where did Alan Turing work during WWII?

• Edinburgh

• Hyde Park

• Bromsgrove

• Bletchley Park

Answer explanation

The work of the code breakers at Bletchley park is estimated to have shortened the war by 2 years and saved countless lives!

As well as being a mathematician, Alan Turing is famous for being a:

• Cryptographer

• Librarian

• Philanthropist

• Stamp collector

Answer explanation

A cryptographer analyses and decrypts information contained within cipher texts and encrypted data.

Turing worked to figure out how to decrypt German communications, especially those that used:

• the two-rotor encryptor

• the Manchester Mark 1

• Bombe electro-mechanical devices

• the Engima Machine

Answer explanation

The enigma machine was a German invention it could have 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 different encryption combinations.

What is the method by which information is converted into secret code that hides the information's true meaning?

• encryption

• imprinting

• corrupting

• CAPTCHA creation

Answer explanation

Encryption is the method of converting code into "gibberish" and to to convert it back to plain text is called Decryption.

Which special-purpose electromechanical computer was used to help break Enigma codes?

• the Turing Machine

• the Bombe

• the Church-Turing Machine

• the Manchester Mark 1

Answer explanation

The Bombe was used to decrypt up to 5000 German enigma codes every day!

It would take a common phrase known as "crib" and the machine would try all the possible combinations until it found a match...

This could take minutes, hours... sometimes it failed to find a match

If you were to use a caeser cipher with a key of 3 shifts to the left, how would you encrypt the word: Cipher?

• ZAMEBO

• ZOMEBO

• ZFMEBO

• ZFMEBA

Answer explanation

In this example you need to take each letter and shift them along their place in the alphabet 3 to the left.

C --- > Z

I --- > F

P ---> M

H --- > E

E --- > B

R --- > O

For the English alphabet, how many rows and columns are there on a polybius square?

• 3x3

• 4x5

• 6x6

• 5x5

Answer explanation

There is a 5 x 5 grid which means that two letters share a space, typically I / J

Which of the methods of encryption have you enjoyed using so far: Caesar, Polybius, Pigpen, Morse.

What type of German messages did the Bombe machine manage to decrypt?

• Weather Reports

• Dinner Choices

• Telegrams

• Civilian chatter

Answer explanation

Every morning at the same time a weather forecast was transmitted. This naturally contained many recurring terms, which provided the code breakers with starting points for cracking the code.