GOTO Amsterdam (June 13-15, 2016) is a vendor independent international software development conference with more than 60 top speakers and 800 attendees. The conference covers topics such as Microservices, Rugged, JavaScript, Post-Agile, Data, Spring++, Connected Worlds & Philosophy.

Presentation: "Closing Keynote: Cracking the Cipher Challenge"

Time: Wednesday 17:00 - 17:50 / Location: Effectenbeurszaal

In "The Code Book", a history of cryptography, the author Simon Singh included ten encrypted messages with a prize of £10,000 for the first person or team to decipher all of them. Thousands of amateur and professional codebreakers took up the Cipher Challenge, but it took over a year before the messages were cracked.

Simon Singh will be talking about how he constructed the Cipher Challenge and how the winners eventually cracked it. He will also be using the Cipher Challenge to give an introduction to the history of cryptography and to demonstrate why encryption is more important today than ever before. The talk will include a demonstration of a genuine Second World War Enigma machine.

Download slides

Simon Singh, Science Writer Based in London

Simon Singh

Biography: Simon Singh

After completing a PhD in particle physics at Cambridge, Simon Singh joined the BBC science department and worked on "Tomorrow's World" and "Horizon" - his documentary about Fermat's Last Theorem won a BAFTA in 1996.
In 1997 he authored "Fermat's Last Theorem", the first book about mathematics to become a No.1 bestseller in the UK. Since then he has published "The Code Book", "Big Bang" and "Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial". He has written for several national newspapers and magazines. He was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association in 2008, and was vindicated in 2010. The resulting Libel Reform Campaign led to the Defamation Act 2013.
His latest book is "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets".

Twitter: @SLSingh