Time:

Coding theory and cryptology/number theory will be on Sunday the 25th, with more cryptology/number theory on Monday the 26th. Prof Hilton will speak Monday night the 26th.

This conference is generously funded by the NSA. No registration fee for attending the conference but if you plan to attend, please email David Joyner at wdj@nadn.navy.mil or call at (410)293-6738.

Main Speakers:

Professor Peter Hilton

SUNY, Binghamton and Univ. of Central Florida

Title:

Abstract: During World War II a team of mathematicians, and young would-be mathematicians, worked round the clock to break the highest grade German military and diplomatic codes. They were astonishingly successful, and as a result provided the allied war machine with an unprecedentedly complete picture of the enemy plans and dispositions.

I was fortunate to be chosen to be a member of that team. In this talk I describe our work and the atmosphere in which it was conducted. I will further give a description of the special contribution of the famous logician Alan Turing, whom I knew well for the last 10 years of his tragically short life.

Professor Carl Pomerance

Univ Georgia

Title:

Abstract: Some important cryptographic systems base their security on our supposed inability to factor large numbers. It thus becomes important to see just how hard this problem is. Some of the best factoring methods we have are modeled on some attractive results in probability theory. For example, the birthday paradox from elementary probability theory (which discusses how soon there will be a repeat when random integers are chosen from the interval [1,x]) is the model for the ``rho'' factoring method of John Pollard. Consider a similar probabilistic problem: how soon will a subsequence have product a square when we choose integers randomly from [1,x]? If we choose the same integer twice, as in the birthday problem, then we have the subsequence. But there are other ways to get a product to be a square other than just multiplying a number by itself. We shall show that the answer is quite different for this new probabilistic problem than for the birthday problem; and the factoring algorithms it leads to (the quadratic sieve and the number field sieve, among others) are much faster than the rho method.

Dr. Neil J. A. Sloane

AT&T Shannon Labs

Title:

Abstract:

An overview of the connections between coding theory and the problem of packing spheres in n-dimensional space. There have been exciting developments in the sphere packing problem this summer.

Other speakers

• Bill Wardlaw (USNA, "The RSA Public Key Cipher Algorithm "), 2:00-2:35 pm, Oct 25,
• Samuel J. Lomonaco, Jr., (UMBC, "Quantum Cryptographic Protocols or How Alice and Bob Outwit Eve") 2:45-3:20 pm, Oct 25,
• T.S. Michael (USNA, "Pranks by Design "), 3:30-4:05 pm, Oct 25,
• A. Shokrollahi, (Bell Labs, "List Decoding of Algebraic-Geometric Codes"), 4:15-4:50, Oct 25

• Dr Charles Osgood, (NSA, "A briefing on NSA grants"), 12:00-1:00, Oct 26
• Dr David Hatch, (NSA Museum, "Enigma and Purple: How the allies exploited enemy communications in WWII"), 3:45-4:45pm, Oct 26