[NFBFTtreasure-Coast] Fwd: [NFBF-L] Unlocking Secrets: A Message from the Host Affiliate

[Nicole D Fincham-Shehan]

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Denise Valkema via NFBF-L <nfbf-l at nfbnet.org>
Date: June 1, 2021 at 8:52:43 PM EDT
To: NFBF <nfbf-l at nfbnet.org>, NFBF <nfbf-leaders at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Denise Valkema <valkemadenise at aol.com>
Subject: [NFBF-L] Unlocking Secrets: A Message from the Host Affiliate
Reply-To: NFB of Florida Internet Mailing List <nfbf-l at nfbnet.org>


Unlocking Secrets: A Message from the Host Affiliate

by Sharon Maneki, Al Maneki, Dezman Jackson, and Scott White

From the Editor: What a treat we are getting from our Maryland Affiliate as it works to devise new and clever ways to promote our convention and to build activities that will work virtually. Here is its latest offering, and I think you will agree it is spectacular:

It is most appropriate to have a discussion about “unlocking secrets” since Maryland is the home of the National Security Agency and the National Cryptologic Museum. The National Security Agency unlocks the secrets of enemy communications and protects United States’ communications from prying eyes. The National Cryptologic Museum illustrates the accomplishments in these fields throughout history. Countries disguise their communications by developing encryption/decryption codes. A successful cryptologic program must be able to both develop strong codes and have the ingenuity to break other countries’ codes. Encryption and decryption are used in many daily life activities, such as protecting Zoom communications, protecting online ordering transactions, banking, etc. At our convention we will unlock the truth about blindness. Many of our tours will unlock the secrets of ingenuity. At the end of this article, we have a message for you to encode and decode! 

Convention Host Activities: Something for Everyone

The activities for the 2021 National Convention offered by the NFB of Maryland will provide participants with entertainment and enlightenment. The fun begins with NFB LOL Comedy Night. Come to cheer the talents of our Federation Family. Help us determine who will win a $200 prize and a $100 prize by voting for your favorite performers. Laughter is good for your health and good for your soul. Memories of the individual comedians, skits, impersonations, and parodies will keep you chuckling throughout the convention. Consult the agenda for specific date, time, and Zoom information. 

We are offering several tours to pique your curiosity. The themes of these tours are ingenuity and infrastructure, which are the basic features of a system or organization. We have two tours that describe the infrastructure of important organizations: the National Federation of the Blind headquarters and the Goddard Space Flight Center. We also have two tours that will delight history buffs: the Harriet Tubman Museum tour describes the infrastructure of the Underground Railroad, which enabled enslaved people to flee to freedom. The B&O Railroad Museum tour describes the early infrastructure of rail transportation. All of these tours highlight American ingenuity. To whet your appetite, here is a brief description of each tour.

Did you ever get lost in the NFB Jernigan Institute? You will not have this problem on our virtual tour of our National Headquarters! This tour will be unique because the tour guides, Mary Ellen Jernigan and Dr. Marc Maurer, were involved before there was a Jernigan Institute. They worked with Dr. Jernigan and will share numerous stories about the development and growth of what was originally called the National Center for the Blind since we purchased the building in 1978. They will also describe how they fulfilled Dr. Jernigan’s dream of creating the first research institute developed solely by the blind. Those who have never been to our headquarters will be surprised by its size and the scope of activities that take place here. Those who have visited will learn something new because we are always creating new ways to use old spaces. 

As in the National Federation of the Blind as a whole, we in the state of Maryland like to reach for the stars. Let us share with you a few facts about an establishment we are fortunate to have here in the state. This place, located just a bit northeast of Washington, DC, was the nation’s first space flight center. It is also the largest combined organization of scientists and engineers in the United States dedicated to increasing knowledge of the Earth, the solar system, and the universe via observations from space. You may also be interested in knowing that this place is the home of John Mather, who won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission. Finally, this establishment developed and manages the largest civilian information system in the world. This agency is of course the Goddard Space Flight Center in the town of Greenbelt, Maryland. Many thanks to Denna Lambert, a member of NFBMD, who is a project manager in the management operations directorate at Goddard for helping us connect with the right people for this tour. Join us during the convention on a virtual interactive tour of this marvel of an operation. You too can reach for the stars! 

Take a visit to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park & Visitor Center. Experience Harriet Tubman’s world through exhibits that are informative and emotive, providing an in-depth understanding of Tubman’s early years spent in Maryland’s Choptank River region and her legacy as a leader, liberator, and humanitarian in the resistance movement of the Underground Railroad. Many people underestimated the intelligence of Harriet Tubman and other enslaved people. The Underground Railroad had a complex infrastructure with a sophisticated network of routes and conductors and a coded system of communication. After the enactment of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery, Harriet continued to be an activist for both racial and gender equality. You will enjoy learning about this Civil Rights activist.

Many of you will remember Anna Kresmer, who was the archivist at the Jacobus tenBroek Library for many years. Anna will be assisting with audio description on our tour of the B&O Railroad Museum. The B&O Railroad Museum, a full affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of American railroading and its impact on American society, culture, and economy. The B&O Railroad has been witness to many milestones in Maryland history, from Baltimore’s development into a major shipping and immigration hub, to major advancements in transportation and communication technology, to the fight for freedom and equal rights during the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. On this virtual tour, you will enjoy wandering through interesting, iconic old buildings and learning about various types of equipment on the museum’s 40-acre campus. 

Be sure to consult the agenda for the specific dates, times, and Zoom information for each of these tours. Consult the NFB of Maryland blog throughout the time leading up to the convention to learn about other surprises that the host affiliate may have for you! Go to nfb.org/convention.

Are you ready to crack the code?

In order to break the code so that you can read the message from the NFB of Maryland, you need a little background. Today’s codes are very complex because cryptologists develop them using sophisticated algorithms with the assistance of high-powered computers. However this message was encoded by using the basic systems of transposition and substitution ciphers or codes. 

A substitution code or cipher system is a method of encrypting messages in which units of plaintext (the original message) are replaced (or substituted) with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth. For example, a very simple key may consist of the statement, 

“Replace each letter of the plaintext message by a letter two units to the right of it.” 

Thus: 

Replace a with c,
Replace b with d,
…,
Replace y with a,
Replace z with b.

Using this key, the phrase “Apple voiceover” is encrypted as: crrngxqkegqxgt

Note that we are simply deleting blank spaces in our plaintext message before encrypting it.
To decrypt a ciphertext (recover the underlying plaintext hidden in the ciphertext) that was constructed from this key, work backwards. Thus, every letter of ciphertext is replaced by one that is two letters to the left: 

Replace a with y,
Replace b with z,
Replace c with x,
…,
Replace y with w,
Replace z with x. 

Using this decryption key, from the ciphertext shown above, we easily get Apple voiceover where we have reinserted the blank space.

In a transposition cipher, the units of the plaintext are rearranged, or permuted, in a different and usually quite complex order, but the units themselves are left unchanged. For example, the “Rail Fence Cipher” can be described geometrically so that the permutation of plaintext may be arranged to resemble a rail fence. For the purposes of this article, we will describe this transposition cipher as an algorithm:

Divide the plaintext into groups of consecutive four letter quadruple sequences. 

From these quadruples, form three “words.” The first word consists of the first letter of each quadruple. The second word consists of the second and third letter of each quadruple. The third word consists of the fourth letter of each quadruple. 

Combine these three “words” into a single sequence of scrambled letters to form the Rail Fence cipher text. 

The blank spaces in the plaintext are simply discarded. 

We illustrate Rail Fence encryption by transposing the plaintext “Apple voiceover.” Since this phrase contains fourteen letters, we arbitrarily add two letters (we will use ‘e’ and ‘s’) to get sixteen letters, a multiple of four. We have four quadruples:

appl
evoi
ceov
eres

From the Rail Fence transposition cipher, we have 

aece
ppvoeore        
livs 

Combining these three “words” into a string of cipher text, we have: 

aeceppvoeorelivs

Note that the first transposed “word” consists of four letters or 1/4 the length of the plaintext, the second “word” consists of eight letters or 1/2 the length of the plaintext, and the third “word” consists of 1/4 the length of the plaintext. As in the case of the substitution cipher described above, plaintext and ciphertext also have the same length in the Rail Fence transposition cipher.

To decrypt the Rail Fence transposition cipher, work backwards. Starting with the cipher text, construct the consecutive quadruples. 

For the plaintext, take the first letter of each quadruple, followed by the second and third letters of each quadruple, followed by the fourth letter of each quadruple. This gives us the original plaintext phrase “applevoiceoveres.” Inserting blank space in the correct space and removing the excess letters ‘e’ and ‘s,’ we get the phrase “apple voiceover.”

From these two simple methods of encryption, we can make the cipher text more complicated by “super-encryption.” For example, we may use a substitution cipher to encrypt a plaintext message, then super-encrypt that cipher text with a Rail Fence transposition cipher. The possibilities here are endless. 

Quite frequently, we are given the cipher text without knowing the key or keys that were used to encrypt the underlying plaintext. It is the work of the cryptanalyst to determine how the encryption was carried out and to recover the underlying key or keys. 

Two Challenges

Here is a two-sentence message to test your encrypting and decrypting skills. To qualify for a $100 prize, submit your answers by 11:59 p.m. EST, July 5. Submit your answers to convention at nfbmd.org. Be sure to include your name and mailing address with your submission. In case of multiple correct entries, the winner will be selected by random drawing. 

1. Encrypt the sentence: 

Federation family: come home to the National Convention
In two ways—First, encrypt the sentence with the two-unit substitution cipher described above to get the first ciphertext. To get the second ciphertext, encrypt the plaintext sentence with the Rail Fence transposition cipher described above. Be sure to identify the key used for each ciphertext. In each case, delete blank spaces and punctuations, and change capitalized letters to lowercase letters.

2. Decrypt the ciphertext:
    MVUHIHZSRWDQURLRXIDZNRXQOOVKLQUPLRQGVSDWQHQRHIIRLIDQLLLV

Upon decryption, insert blank spaces and punctuations, and correct spelling errors if there are any. Hint: this ciphertext was multiply encrypted.

Enjoy encrypting and decrypting our message. Good luck. See you on Zoom during the convention

https://nfb.org//images/nfb/publications/bm/bm21/bm2106/bm210604.htm


Denise Valkema, President
National Federation of the Blind of Florida
President at nfbflorida.org
(305)972-8529
WWW.NFBFLORIDA.ORG
Follow us @nfbflorida
Live the life you want.
_______________________________________________
NFBF-L mailing list
NFBF-L at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbf-l_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for NFBF-L:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbf-l_nfbnet.org/treasurecoastnfb%40gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nfbf-treasure-coast_nfbnet.org/attachments/20210601/71148469/attachment-0001.html>