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- Newsgroups: sci.crypt
- Path: sparky!uunet!sun-barr!ames!pacbell.com!well!johnm
- From: johnm@well.sf.ca.us (John Markoff)
- Subject: Re: "Sneakers" -- action/adventure movie about Cryptography
- Message-ID: <BuArqC.B66@well.sf.ca.us>
- Sender: news@well.sf.ca.us
- Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
- References: <6395@vtserf.cc.vt.edu> <1992Sep4.205842.12303@qualcomm.com> <b1nn#rn.nagle@netcom.com>
- Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 06:08:36 GMT
- Lines: 27
-
- In article <b1nn#rn.nagle@netcom.com> nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) writes:
- >karn@qualcom.qualcomm.com (Phil Karn) writes:
- >
- >>In article <6395@vtserf.cc.vt.edu>, ranck@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Wm. L. Ranck) writes:
- >>|> I saw a preview of "Sneakers" when I was at the movies about a week ago.
- >>|> In a couple of scenes they showed groups of letters on a screen rapidly
- >>|> changing (sort of like a slot machine) and resolving into words. Now this
- >>|> bothered me. The space characters were already in place! In other words
- >>|> it was obvious from the cyphertext what the length of each word was.
- >>|> Pretty poor encryption scheme that.
- >
- >>It sounds like that scene was written by the same guy who did the
- >>climax of "War Games". Remember how the computer (Joshua?) cracked the
- >>missile launch code ONE CHARACTER AT A TIME?
- >
- > The idea probably came from one of the early Bond movies, where
- >Bond uses a suitcase-sized (this is a '60s movie) safe-opening machine
- >which worked that way.
- >
- > John Nagle
-
-
-
- I'm pretty sure the script of Sneakers was written by the same two
- screen writers who wrote War Games. They came to a CPSR meeting
- in Palo Alto ages ago, asked for technical advice and outlined
- the plot...Hope its more technically accurate...
-