[ISN] Cracking code gives password for college place

[R. A. Hettinga]

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Status:  U
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 13:19:46 -0600 (CST)
From: InfoSec News <isn at c4i.org>
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Subject: [ISN] Cracking code gives password for college place
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http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991814

15:02 21 January 02
Will Knight

A Canadian university has awarded a scholarship to the first
prospective student who successfully cracked an encoded mathematics
problem, posed by teachers in place of a conventional entrance exam.

One hundred other students who also managed to decode and figure out
the problem were offered a place on the computer science course at the
university.

The University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, issued the challenge
to computer science and mathematics students in October 2001. The
competition closes on 1 February 2002.

Local college students between the age of 16 and 19 were encouraged to
take part, but the competition also received significant international
interest. About 16,000 visitors from numerous countries were recorded
at the competition web site, where the encoded message can be found.

Increasing popularity

The challenge was to convert a mathematical problem into text from a
confusing string of numbers. Then figure out the problem and email the
answer to the university.

Nigel Smart, a researcher at the University of Bristol, UK, says that
cryptography is increasingly popular with undergraduates and lecturers
because it combines pure mathematics with real-world computer science.

"It is a really good way of attracting students and has been a really
big growth area," he says. However, Smart adds that the University's
problem does not look very difficult at first glance. It took New
Scientist 30 minutes to decode and solve the problem.

It is not the first time that a code-cracking puzzle has been used to
select new recruits. The UK government's intelligence headquarters,
GCHQ, issued a challenge to job hunters in January 2000. The problem
was more complicated than Lethbridge's and involved messages hidden
within images on the organisation's web site. Another problem was
posed in November 2000.



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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'



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