Code that helped end Apartheid
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Code that helped end Apartheid
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Re: Code that helped end Apartheid
#2Re: Code that helped end Apartheid
#3So 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!"
Re: Code that helped end Apartheid
#4A longer version is here
https://github.com/Vulacode/Articles/blob/main/Talking%20To%...
Re: Code that helped end Apartheid
#5So 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 yo…
Did you end up discovering the original password to the zip file? (was it, as I'd hope, `TIMBOBIMBO` ?)
Re: Code that helped end Apartheid
#6You know it's _proper_ vintage crypto code because it uses the now very unfashionable word 'encipher'.
Re: Code that helped end Apartheid
#7So 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 yo…
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
Re: Code that helped end Apartheid
#8I 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.
Re: Code that helped end Apartheid
#9The 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!
Re: Code that helped end Apartheid
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