Title

KRYPTOS: A Pacific Northwest Cryptanalysis Contest for Undergraduates

Authors

Cheryl Beaver, Western Oregon University
Stuart Boersma, Central Washington UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Mathematics

Publication Date

4-12-2012

Abstract

Many students are intrigued by the idea of breaking secret codes. In the spring of 2011, the first KRYPTOS contest debuted and gave 49 undergraduate students from the Pacific Northwest a chance to test their cryptanalytic abilities. The contest consisted of three cipher challenges that students, working as individuals or in teams, tried to solve over a long weekend. In this paper, we describe the details of the contest including the code breaking challenges and their solutions.

Comments

This article was originally published in Cryptologia. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Recommended Citation

Beaver, C., & Boersma, S. (2012). KRYPTOS: A Pacific Northwest Cryptanalysis Contest for Undergraduates. Cryptologia, 36(2), 149–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2012.660238

Journal

Cryptologia