Cracking Crypto To Get Into College 373
Kallahar writes "New Scientist is running a story about a Canadian university who had students break an encrypted message in order to get into college. A good idea to grab a good student, but here in 'Free' America these kids would have been thrown in jail for violating the DMCA ..."
Re:The DMC is bad enough - you needn't make stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean like when Professor Felten was threatened because he met the challenge to break SDMI? Oh wait...
Doesn't make you a good student (Score:4, Insightful)
Since I know scripting languages, am I an elite hacker?
Since I can install linux, am I a sys admin?
Since I can make brownies am I Wolfgang Puck?
IMHO breaking the encryption doesn't mean too much.
American universities (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't make you a good student (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a good basis for a scholarship and admission. Most other scholarships and admissions are based on self-written essays. At least it is less subjective.
..Minus the slashdotisms (Score:5, Insightful)
From slashdot:
But from the article:
And from slashdot:
Uh, yeah. Whatever.
Find my secret message (Score:0, Insightful)
I must say you are silly
A stupid idiot
Please tell me you know what it is
Elite hax0rs here at slashdot
Roadkill, eww!
Shit, it's almost done
Enter Sandman - Metallica
Xeno is cool
Re:..Minus the slashdotisms (Score:5, Insightful)
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. While it may not have been required for admission, and I don't know the size of their program, 100 sounds pretty high, so that may well encompass all incoming freshmen, or not.
You missed the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Link to puzzle (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:American universities (Score:3, Insightful)
Not every kid who wants to try CS needs to be a math whiz. I was a Music major when I took my first CS class on a whim, and now I'm getting my Comp E degree. When I started, I didn't know anything about algorithm formation or discrete math.
The REAL Story ... (the code isn't the challenge) (Score:5, Insightful)
Amongst other things, it talks about how the code is the first part of the challenge. The coded message leads to a math problem (which is actually kind of fun and has a rather elegant solution). Solve the math problem, and you get into school with the chance to win a scholarship.
Having gone to the site and gone through the decode and solve phases, I can happily report that the "code" isn't really a code at all. As the site hints, it's basically "coded" by being written in base-4. The challenge is really in the math problem, which requires applicants to find the summation of all decimal digits in the sequence of natural numbers from one to one million. While this isn't impossible, it does require some thought and intelligence. I thought it was a great idea for students who liked math and computer science (the problem can also be solved with a simple brute force algorithm) but weren't neccessarily that stellar students nor interested in lengthy University applications.
Heck - I spent an hour coming up with a solution and then verifying it with a quick little Java program. It was fun! Give it a shot!
(As a Troll-y sidenote, I'd like to mention with some degree of bitterness that I submitted this story, except when I did it, I got the facts right. Apparently this warrants a rejection, and irrelevant whining about the DMCA warrants approval. Do you ever wonder why
Re:Man, this is easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Well of course it's easy for a university student, and of course it's totally possible to complete for a high school student. Doesn't make much sense to post a puzzle for admission to a CS program that nobody can solve, does it?
At the end of the day, Lethbridge was trying to attract self-motivated students. The students who actually take the time to decode the message (very easy) and then solve the problem (a little more difficult, especially if you try to come up with a formula instead of just brute-forcing it) are the ones that they want. Not neccessarily because they have the capability to come up with the correct solution, but because they've got the moxy and the motivation to actually give it a "college try", as it were.
Your flamebait comment about the implications of Canadian University degrees will go ignored, but noted.
Re:=) (Score:3, Insightful)
A = /001 /002
B =
etc. Numbers, dates and punctuation not included.
Answer's 27,000,001 in case you were wondering.
Silly Question (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The DMC is bad enough - you needn't make stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
It is definitely feasible that a college student breaking the encryption on an encrypted message, even when specifically asked by his college to break the encryption on a message given to him by his college, would be at risk for prosecution under the DMCA. It is a very broad piece of legislation, the specific wording of which could easily be held up in court in a variety of cases, regardless of whether or not the defendant was asked to break the encryption and whether or not the person that originally encrypted it had a problem with it.
Re:Doesn't make you a good student (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they are trying to find students who are more than plain academic nerds. A high school student who has enough knowledge to break an encryption scheme (even if its fairly trivial by todays standard) shows potential. High school does not teach the theory to be proficient in encryption and any student who demonstrates this skill must have put in extra time to learn (which is proof of potential IMHO).
I think that this is a great way to separate bookworms from brilliant people.
The fact that they can break the encryption doesn't make them a computer scientist, but then again a non-computer person can enter university and as long as they have the desire to learn they can leave with a lot of knowledge.
Re:The REAL Story ... (the code isn't the challeng (Score:3, Insightful)
The college I attended had an annual competition where high school students built robotics or coded something, and would give out some degree of scholarships or other financial assistance towards prospective students and I can tell you that anybody who wrote a program to find the summation of all natural numbers would be laughed out. These were things like kernels, AI schemes, language recognition applications. I fail to see the cool factor in this. Any nerd deserving a scholarship for brains alone should really be challenged and not something that can be solved by a 2 minute script.
Give it to the jock instead (Score:2, Insightful)
ummmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:the details (Score:2, Insightful)