Matt Curtin: Brute Force: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard (2005)

In the 1960s, it became increasingly clear that more and more information was going to be stored on computers, not on pieces of paper. With these changes in technology and the ways it was used came a need to protect both the systems and the information. For the next ten years, encryption systems of varying strengths were developed, but none proved to be rigorous enough. In 1973, the NBS put out an open call for a new, stronger encryption system that would become the new federal standard. Several years later, IBM responded with a system called Lucifer that came to simply be known as DES (data encryption standard).

The strength of an encryption system is best measured by the attacks it is able to withstand, and because DES was the federal standard, many tried to test its limits. (It should also be noted that a number of cryptographers and computer scientists told the NSA that DES was not nearly strong enough and would be easily hacked.) Rogue hackers, usually out to steal as much information as possible, tried to break DES. A number of “white hat” hackers also tested the system and reported on their successes. Still others attacked DES because they believed it had outlived its effectiveness and was becoming increasingly vulnerable. The sum total of these efforts to use all of the possible keys to break DES over time made for a brute force attack.

In 1996, the supposedly uncrackable DES was broken. In this captivating and intriguing book, Matt Curtin charts DES’s rise and fall and chronicles the efforts of those who were determined to master it.

Publisher Springer, 2005
Copernicus Series
ISBN 0387201092, 9780387201092
291 pages

wikipedia
publisher
google books

PDF

Anti-Jargon: Terms of Deschooling Classroom (2009-) [English, Serbian, Macedonian]

“Terms is a group that studies terms in the field of contemporary artistic, theoretical, cultural and educational practice from the perspective of practitioners active on the independent cultural scenes of Skopje and Belgrade through the process of self-education. The aim of the group work was not to create yet another glossary, vocabulary or lexicon, but rather to establish a relational web of concepts in most frequent use. We either comprehend them differently or are, simply, unaware of the different readings according to one’s assumed theoretical (or ideological) position. Investigating the origin, epistemology and the politics of a term, we come to a non-implied, non-colloquial – anti-jargon term platform. By jargon we imply fast, specialized communication, with implied meaning but is actually completely empty. There is no implied meaning behind used terms, instead they only represent an affiliation to the moment, profession, ideology… This position is not a result of some kind of idealistic search for ‘authentic’, ‘original’ meaning of the word. On the contrary, it is a search to establish the term and the politicality of its use in the contextual, historically-materialistic sense. In addition, our intention is not only to detect and demonstrate the mechanism of jargon or to claim that we are excluded from it. The work on de-jargonisation we also view as affirmation of new terms. The new terms can be subjected to de-jargnisation as a prevention.

In this publication we offer the registry as a format for de-jargonisation – it is a simple table that is also one of the algorithms for using this publication. Origin, history, utilization, references and ‘description’ are determined for terms used in this table. ‘Description’ can be a note, artistic statement, a list of other terms, or something close to a lexicon entry. The entries in the table link to texts in the publication and outside of it – and thus create relational network of terms and definitions, virtually unlimited hypertextual structure. Publication is open in content and structure, and its real purpose is achieved if the users – editors/authors/readers – continue to work on it: filling in, adding, reediting and using it. That’s why we leave the registry unfinished, demonstrating the possible ways and formats of its use, and invite you to cooperate with is on making it grow.”

Terms: Artistic Immunity, Contexterin, Contextual art in the countries of Eastern Europe: Approaches, diagnoses and treatments of the problems, Festivals Classification, The Festivals (in the ex-Yugoslavia region) as a “microphysics of power” (Foucault), How my Life Turned into a Festival, Potentiality, Soros Realism

Working group: Milena Bogavac, Dragana Bulut, Bojan Đorđev, Anđela Ćirović, Siniša Ilić, Aleksandra Jančevska, Boris Krmov, Milan Marković, Katarina Popović, Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, Ljiljana Tasić, Ivana Vaseva, Elena Veljanovska, Dragana Zarevska.

HTML

From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb: 1990-2010) (2011) [multiling]

The publication explores practices of critical contemporary fine arts – practices of research, progressive and experimental actions by contemporary fine artists from the 1990s to the present, in four countries in the region – Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. These are practices which focus on issues such as identity aspects (national, cultural, religious, ethnic), workers’ rights, social integration of minorities, global market fluctuation trends and its impact in the local context, unscrupulousness of capital, the position of women, spatial devastation, art institution system issues, and many others.

The publication maps out and theoretically reviews critical and research practices, and contemporary fine arts practices oriented towards the contemporary civilization moment, which have been active in the context of the independent cultural scene since the 1990s, but which have also been present in the institutional frame. The authors provide only drafts of the political, social, economic and cultural changes of the local contexts, through four segments, due to a lack of space. Each segment focuses on the practices and context of a given country, i.e. the capital as the primary focus, and in addition to the introductory word by the authors, it includes interviews (with authors, theorists, curators, organizers…) who contribute to the recording of these artistic practices based on their experience, work and knowledge.

The segments deal with the Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, and Zagreb scenes. All the authors devised their approaches in an effort to present the fruitful and creative production of these cities, to the greatest extent possible.

Contemporary visual art is discussed through the works and experiences of Igor Grubić, Sanja Iveković, Andreja Kulunčić and Darko Šimičić (Croatia), Stevan Vuković, Milica Tomić, Danilo Prnjat and Živko Grozdanić Gera (Serbia), Neven Korda, Marko Peljhan, Marija Mojca Pungerčar and Maja Smrekar (Slovenia), and Bojan Ivanov, Zoran Poposki, Mira Gakina and Žaneta Vangeli (Macedonia).

The book was conceived as a multilingual publication in English, in addition to the local languages (Croatia, Macedonian, Serbian and Slovenian).

Realized as part of the project Let’s Talk Critic Arts.

Editorial Board: Dušan Dovč, Vesna Milosavljević, Jasna Soptrajanova and Dea Vidović
Authors: Jasna Jakšić – in cooperation with Tihana Bertek, Maja Gujinović, Ana Kovačić, Srđan Latreza, Petra Novak, Tina Novak, Tamara Sertić and Leda Sutlović (Croatia); Nebojša Vilić (Macedonia); Miha Colner and Nika Grabar (Slovenia); Vesna Tašić – in cooperation with Vesna Milosavljević and Miroljub Marjanović (Serbia)
Publishers: SEEcult.org in cooperation with ForumSkopje; Kurziv – Platform for Matters of Culture, Media and Society; SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana / Artservis; The Association of NGOs Clubture
Published in April 2011, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Skopje
611 pages
This work is made available by the Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported unless not stated differently.

authors

PDF