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Express Tribune
07-05-2025
- Science
- Express Tribune
AI would crack second world war Enigma code in seconds, say experts
Listen to article The Enigma code, once deemed unbreakable by Nazi Germany and famously cracked by Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park, would pose little challenge to modern computing power, say technology experts. The cipher, which relied on a mechanical device with rotating rotors and complex plugboard settings, once required massive effort and ingenuity to decode. But today, the same task could be completed in mere minutes using advanced software and processing speeds. 'Enigma wouldn't stand up to modern computing and statistics,' said Prof Michael Wooldridge, a computer science expert at the University of Oxford. 'What took months of mechanical work can now be replicated with simple programmes and solved almost instantly.' The original Enigma machine had an astronomical number of possible settings, changed daily, to ensure security. It was this complexity that gave the Germans confidence in its impenetrability. Polish mathematicians first cracked early versions, but later improvements forced British codebreakers to develop the 'bombe' — a mechanical computer used to sift through billions of permutations. Despite its reputation, Enigma had flaws. Dr Mustafa A Mustafa, a software security lecturer at the University of Manchester, said one major weakness was that no letter could be encoded as itself. This vulnerability, combined with early automation, allowed Turing's team to eventually crack the cipher. Now, experts believe even a basic AI model could replicate and surpass the capabilities of wartime codebreaking machines. Wooldridge pointed out that the AI system ChatGPT successfully recreated the bombe's logic, while cloud computing systems could complete the same work in seconds. While Enigma may be a relic of the past, more recent encryption systems such as Rivest-Shamir-Adleman RSA cipher 'To be able to crack it – it took them months, more than a year – but to be able actually to do this within the lifetime of the war, it was a huge thing,' he said. 'God knows what would have happened if we hadn't cracked Enigma in time.'— which relies on large prime numbers — remain secure, for now. But that may change if quantum computing lives up to its potential. For all the technological progress, historians and scientists alike stress that the original breaking of Enigma remains a monumental feat. 'To crack something believed to be unbreakable, during the pressure of war, was extraordinary,' said Mustafa. 'It changed the course of history.'
The Guardian
28-01-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Experts urge caution over use of Chinese AI DeepSeek
Experts have urged caution over rapidly embracing the Chinese artificial intelligence platform DeepSeek, citing concerns about it spreading misinformation and how the Chinese state might exploit users' data. The new low-cost AI wiped $1tn off the leading US tech stock index this week and it rapidly became the most downloaded free app in the UK and the US. Donald Trump called it a 'wake-up call' for tech firms. Its emergence has shocked the tech world by apparently showing it can achieve a similar performance to widely used platforms such as ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost. Michael Wooldridge, a professor of the foundations of AI at Oxford University, said it was not unreasonable to assume data inputted into the chatbot could be shared with the Chinese state. He said: 'I think it's fine to download it and ask it about the performance of Liverpool football club or chat about the history of the Roman empire, but would I recommend putting anything sensitive or personal or private on them? 'Absolutely not … Because you don't know where the data goes.' Dame Wendy Hall, a member of the United Nations high-level advisory body on AI, told the Guardian: 'You can't get away from the fact that if you are a Chinese tech company dealing with information you are subject to the Chinese government's rules on what you can and cannot say.' The prime minister's spokesperson, when asked if Downing Street would rule out using Chinese AI in Whitehall, said he would not 'get ahead of specific models'. He said the advancements showed that the UK must 'go further and faster to remove barriers to innovation' in AI. DeepSeek is an open-source platform, which means software developers can adapt it to their own ends. It has sparked hopes of a new wave of innovation in AI, which had appeared to be dominated by US tech companies – which were relying on huge investments in microchips, datacentres and new power sources. Wooldridge said: 'It does rather forcefully signal, in case anybody hadn't got the message, that China is not behind in this space.' Some people testing DeepSeek have found that it will not answer questions on matters such as the Tiananmen Square massacre. When asked about the status of Taiwan, it repeats the Chinese Communist party line that the island is an 'inalienable' part of China. 'The biggest problem with generative AI is misinformation,' Hall said. 'It depends on the data in a model, the bias in that data and how it is used – you can see that problem with the DeepSeek chatbot.' One user, Azeem Azhar, an AI expert, who asked about the events in Tiananmen Square, was told that DeepSeek could not provide detailed information and that 'this topic is highly sensitive and often censored in many countries, including China'. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion However, the AI then did explain that the events were 'widely recognised as the suppression of pro-democracy protests' and said: 'The Chinese government responded with a violent crackdown, resulting in the deaths of hundreds (or possibly thousands) of people, including both protesters and soldiers.' People use AI models such as DeepSeek and ChatGPT to help them process personal papers or documents for work, such as meeting minutes, but anything uploaded can be taken by the owner of the company and used for training the AI or for other purposes. DeepSeek is based in Hangzhou and makes clear in its privacy policy that the personal information it collects from users is held 'on secure servers located in the People's Republic of China'. It says it uses data to 'comply with our legal obligations, or as necessary to perform tasks in the public interest, or to protect the vital interests of our users and other people'. China's national intelligence law states that all enterprises, organisations and citizens 'shall support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts'.
