Codebreaking Conference To Raise Money For Bletchley Park

 Security:  Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow’

On 7 November 2009, the ACCU* will be holding a one day conference at Bletchley Park, home of the legendary World War Two 'Enigma' codebreakers and the site at which the world's first digital computer went operational.  All proceeds of the conference will go to the Bletchley Park Trust to help with the upkeep of Bletchley Park.  Confirmed speakers include:

Tony Sale Hon FBCS
After careers in electronics and computing, Tony Sale set up the first Museums at Bletchley Park in 1994.  He has researched the breaking of German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers in World War Two and rebuilt the Colossus Mk2 computer.
How the Germans gave away their "unbreakable" codes
Tony will describe how human operator errors enabled the code breakers in World War Two Bletchley Park to decipher vital German messages both on the battlefield Enigma cipher machine and the German High Command Lorenz cipher machine, which was used by Hitler to communicate with his generals.

Simon Singh
Author, journalist and TV producer, specialising in science and mathematics.  Author of 'The Code Book', a history of codes and codebreaking from Ancient Egypt to the Internet.

Cracking the Cipher Challenge
"The Code Book", a history of cryptography, included ten encrypted messages with a prize of £10,000 for the first person or team to decipher them.  The Cypher Challenge was taken up by 1000s of amateur and professional codebreakers but it was over a year before the messages../

Cont’d/
../were broken.  Simon will give an introduction to the history of cryptography and demonstrate why encryption is more important today than ever before.  He will also operate a genuine Second World War Enigma cipher machine.

Phil Zimmermann
Phil is the original creator of the PGP e-mail encryption package, which despite three years of government persecution became the most widely used e-mail encryption software in the world. 

The Conference will be held in Bletchley Park’s elegant Victorian Mansion.  Delegates will have the opportunity to visit Bletchley Park and its various museums and exhibits and the National Museum of Computing (www.tnmoc.org), which is based at the Park.  Bletchley Park is home to Colossus, the Bombe re-build and a mock-up Bombe that featured in the film 'Enigma', original Enigma machines and a Lorenz coding machine. 

* The Conference is organised by the ACCU, an organisation of programmers who care about professionalism in programming and are dedicated to raising the standard of programming. 

Conference rates are £85 ACCU members and £95 non-ACCU members.

Bletchley Park:    www.bletchleypark.org.uk
National Museum of Computing:  http:// www.tnmoc.org  
ACCU:      http:// www.tnmoc.org
Tony Sale:     www.codesandciphers.org.uk
Simon Singh:     www.simonsingh.net
Phil Zimmerman:    www.philzimmermann.com/EN/background/index.htm

For further information contact: Astrid Byro astrid.byro@googlemail.com, or Alan Lenton alanlenton@gmail.com tickets, go to http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/shop/index.rhtm/130872/cat.html

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