[HN Gopher] Code that helped end Apartheid
___________________________________________________________________
Code that helped end Apartheid
Author : impish9208
Score : 174 points
Date : 2024-10-18 13:05 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| pvg wrote:
| https://archive.is/yK8Jb
| jgrahamc wrote:
| _So when he DM'd me to say that he had "a hell of a story"--
| promising "one-time pads! 8-bit computers! Flight attendants
| smuggling floppies full of random numbers into South Africa!"--I
| responded._
|
| Ha ha ha. Yes, that was literally my very short pitch to Steven
| about Tim Jenkin's story!
|
| The actual DM: "I think this has the makings of a hell of a
| story: https://blog.jgc.org/2024/09/cracking-old-zip-file-to-
| help-o... If you want I can connect you with Tim Jenkin. One time
| pads! 8-bit computers! Flights attendants smuggling floppies full
| of random numbers into South Africa!"
| jefb wrote:
| Did you end up discovering the original password to the zip
| file? (was it, as I'd hope, `TIMBOBIMBO` ?)
| jgrahamc wrote:
| No, I did not. I threw quite a lot of compute power at it
| using bkcrack (CPU) and hashcat (GPU) but never found out
| what it was. It was definitely not TIMBOBIMBO, sadly!
|
| I also ended up sponsoring the bkcrack project because the
| maintainer added a new option for me:
| https://github.com/kimci86/bkcrack/pull/126
| latchkey wrote:
| How much was "quite a lot"?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I did a pass with bkcrack. The password is over 13 char.
|
| bkcrack.exe -k 98e0f009 48a0b11a c70f8499 -r 1..18 ?p
| bkcrack 1.7.0 - 2024-05-26 [11:07:33] Recovering password
| length 0-6... length 7... length 8... length 9... length
| 10... length 11... length 12... length 13...
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I can tell you it's over 14 ?p, and over 16 ?u?d, and
| over 17 ?u.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Though, you could argue it was a 16 bit computer, of course :)
|
| (It was an 8088, essentially an 8086 with an 8 bit data bus,
| but 16bit registers and 20bit address bus).
| philistine wrote:
| At this point in time (meaning 2024) bits for computers are a
| word to indicate a culture rather than the technical merits
| of a computer.
| rsynnott wrote:
| In which case it's definitely a 16 bit computer; it was
| just a cheap 8086 (the cheapness achieved through the
| memory bus), and it was part of the start of the 16 bit
| era. From the _user's_ point of view it was basically a 16
| bit computer.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This was a great read, thank you for inspiring it! I also did
| not realize it was you who led the petition for the UK to
| apologize to Turing, what an achievement.
|
| You're quoted at the end as saying, "The code itself is a
| historical document". That sort of electrified me as I began
| thinking about what other historical code is out there in need
| of preservation. I'm fascinated with stuff like this, toolkits
| meant to be used in the field with little room for incremental
| development. Tracking this kind of stuff down seems like a fun
| hobby.
| kwar13 wrote:
| I didn't know it was you who led the charge for the apology to
| Turing. Thank you!
| aanet wrote:
| This is such a fabulous story!! Thank you, good Sir, for
| bringing it to light!! <3
|
| The story reads like _The Cuckoo's Egg_ in a way. Spies,
| intrigue, covert comms, action, revolution!
|
| I loved that the code is still around, and works.
|
| Kudos!!
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| A longer version is here
|
| https://github.com/Vulacode/Articles/blob/main/Talking%20To%...
| rsynnott wrote:
| You know it's _proper_ vintage crypto code because it uses the
| now very unfashionable word 'encipher'.
| quuxplusone wrote:
| Funny but also thought-provoking! When _did_ the verb
| "encipher" give way to "encrypt," and why? I might enjoy
| reading a well-researched piece on that subject.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I don't know why but here's when: https://books.google.com/ng
| rams/graph?content=encipher%2Cenc...
| seanw444 wrote:
| Wow. Apparently that's when AES and Triple DES were
| introduced, which can't be coincidental.
| kylecazar wrote:
| Yeah... Data Encryption Standard published in the late
| '70s, and given its adoption, I assume solidified the use
| of 'encryption' in this context.
| iamthepieman wrote:
| So basically encipher was never used in the context of the
| web. And the web is what made encrypt popular separate from
| encipher. It does look like maybe encipher was possibly
| going to take off but encrypt stepped on its head.
| macobrien wrote:
| Interestingly, the basis of web encryption does use the
| term "encipherment" -- the `KeyUsage` field of X.509
| certificates has `keyEncipherment` and `dataEncipherment`
| flags.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Why is it unfashionable? I quite like it.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I've no idea why it died out, but it certainly seems to have.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| I remember reading in Bruce Schneier's _Applied Cryptography_
| that in some cultures "encrypt" refers to the process of
| entombing bodies for burial and that "encipher" did not have
| that baggage.
|
| Similar connotation to "decrypt" which would be exhumation.
| maxbond wrote:
| What comes to my mind is that _decipher_ has a well
| established common meaning, but _decrypt_ just means "dis-
| encrypt".
| Simulacra wrote:
| I think it was the fishing trip with Mandela and then-Prime
| Minister F.W. de Klerk in 1990 that ended apartheid. Specifically
| when one of de Klerk's people got a hook in his hand, and a
| Mandela person cleaned and bandaged it. After that trip Apartheid
| was finally broken.
| tgv wrote:
| That might have been the symbolic last drop that made the
| bucket overflow.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Sometimes all it takes is for the right people to see at the
| right time that their opponent bleeds just the same red blood
| as they do.
| bdndndndbve wrote:
| What actually ended apartheid was international pressure and
| the white government's fear of a civil war. Economically
| isolated and vastly outnumbered, the apartheid government would
| have been completely removed from the country and had their
| property seized.
|
| My understanding is Mandela was a respected leader who was
| willing to play ball and facilitate a peaceful transition where
| the white leadership got to keep all their property. That's why
| there's still massive economic inequality in SA today. Not to
| say Mandela wasn't admirable or that he didn't suffer, but it
| was a conscious choice to avoid outright military conflict at
| the cost of preserving an implicit racial hierarchy.
| rsynnott wrote:
| The existence of a viable ANC was arguably pretty important
| to the international pressure, though. Absent a viable
| opposition, you probably do not _want_ to exert _too_ much
| pressure on a rogue state, however nasty, because its only
| response is to either go full autarky, or collapse into
| complete chaos.
|
| Take North Korea, say, another extremely nasty rogue nuclear-
| armed state. Even if there was a level of pressure that the
| international community could put on North Korea that would
| collapse it (it's already pretty far down the 'autarky'
| route), you can see that countries would be unwilling to go
| quite _that_ far, because there's no viable opposition and it
| would likely collapse in a very dangerous and ugly way.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You don't even need to use hypothetical examples. Libya,
| Iraq, arguably Syria, Yemen, Yugoslavia.
|
| Though to be fair none of these had happened prior to
| apartheid.
| TheBruceHimself wrote:
| While it certainly involved a lot of people doing the right
| thing, that peaceful transition was absolutely incredible and
| I really do think that's why non-South Africans look on
| Mandela so fondly. If you'd told me everything about the
| Apartheid right up until its collapse and then said "Ok, the
| ANC basically win, gain power, what do you think happens?",
| I'd struggle to think of any scenario where there wasn't
| incredible bloodshed or upheaval to the point of ruining
| lives beyond measure. There was so much bad blood. You'd
| assume that at least the people who were in charge, the
| people who ran the show, surely would've saw a grim end. Not
| even property seizures? . Somehow, Mandela led an effort that
| just rose above that. He probably prevented a lot of pain
| just by not giving into such things.
|
| To me, the peaceful transition is the achievement. It is the
| amazing part of it.
| bdndndndbve wrote:
| Does poverty not also ruin lives? There's room for people
| to disagree about the specifics but the lack of widespread
| wealth redistribution has certainly killed a lot of people
| as well, it's just easier to ignore than a war.
| jcbrand wrote:
| South Africa does have wealth distribution policies in
| the form of requiring all companies that do business with
| the state or which need licences (like mines or telecoms)
| to have a minimum number of black ownership and black
| employees.
|
| South Africa also has affirmative action.
|
| In fact, there are more race based laws in South Africa
| currently than during Apartheid.
|
| https://freemarketfoundation.com/race-law-in-south-
| africa-30...
|
| Now maybe you're talking about violent wealth
| redistribution. That generally doesn't work. It results
| in collapse and everyone gets poorer.
|
| Zimbabwe bring the prime most recent example.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| The current President also benefitted heavily from BEE as
| he was a close personal friend of Mandela. Made hundreds
| of millions.
|
| If you say that you are going to take large amounts of
| other people's assets, there is no way to run that
| process and not have huge amounts of corruption.
|
| The problem has been: very high crime, heavily mismanaged
| infrastructure (Eskom is collapsing due to corruption,
| ANC politicians were taking tons of money from
| contracts), no investment in education, and so a
| population with no skills. I am not sure what wealth
| redistribution fixes...it has been tried repeatedly. It
| is like people thinking that a $1m loan from your father
| turns you into a different person...no, most people will
| end up wasting that money too.
| pessimizer wrote:
| He essentially preserved the economic/racial balance of
| apartheid, while he and the people around him became the
| new insiders. He started hanging out with the Clintons and
| giving diamonds to Naomi Campbell.
|
| > To me, the peaceful transition is the achievement. It is
| the amazing part of it.
|
| Apartheid was "peaceful" enough. The problem is the lack of
| "transition." The same people are still living in the
| shacks their parents lived in.
|
| > that's why non-South Africans look on Mandela so fondly.
|
| Non-South Africans had a lot of cognitive dissonance
| because they did business with South Africa and they didn't
| like what that said about themselves morally. The end of
| Apartheid gave them the license to continue that business
| guilt-free. It's like how sharecropping debt peonage to the
| same plantations that people were enslaved in and the
| leasing of convicts who had been sentenced to decade-long
| sentences for the crime of _vagrancy_ let Americans feel
| better about how much they benefited from slavery.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| There is a lot of inaccuracies here (not only in your post
| but I am replying to stuff above):
|
| First, there was significant pressure on de Klerk from
| Western governments. Thatcher told him to release Mandela,
| for example. The reason she did not support sanctions is
| because they would likely harm South Africans for no
| reason...this was justified by later events. As pressure on
| de Klerk would have made it a lot harder to negotiate with
| Mandela freely.
|
| Two, de Klerk became leader and his first action was to try
| to form a path to reconciliation. Mandela played his part
| by abandoning terrorism (I am not sure why this is
| disputed...this is what Mandela said about himself). de
| Klerk's position was, however, not particularly easy
| because whilst everyone acknowledged that the system had to
| change, it wasn't clear how to get to that point.
|
| Three, the article implies all white South Africans were
| racist...this is not true. This assumption is not why
| apartheid happened either. de Klerk was not Botha. The US
| experience dominates the world, the assumption that
| everyone in the NP was racist is not accurate...let alone
| saying everyone of a certain race must have been racist.
|
| Four, there has been massive upheaval. The economy of South
| Africa has collapsed, and the ANC did seize property under
| the auspices of BEE. Large companies were told they had to
| hand shares to ANC members or they would be shut down,
| these companies then took out loans to buy back their
| shares. The current President was a friend of Mandela,
| union leader, he was then gifted hundreds of millions in
| shares...that is how he became wealthy (and, if you can
| believe it, he is the "anti-corruption" guy).
|
| Five, the reason there wasn't bloodshed because there was a
| transitional period. This was agreed by both parties, this
| is why Mandela wins plaudits for recognizing that NP had
| legitimate concerns that had to be taken into account to
| move forward. But...this still hasn't stopped the country
| collapsing.
|
| Six, the argument that there must still be racism because
| of economic inequality is a uniquely US take. The ANC
| expropriated wealth en masse, the majority went to party
| insiders, and there has been almost no interest in serious
| economic policy-making because...the country is majority
| black, and the ANC are the black party. The reason people
| are poor is because there is no education and so they have
| no skills, crime is also out of control...this doesn't have
| anything to do with someone else not being poor (and btw,
| almost everyone in South Africa is now poor, the currency
| has collapsed, everything has collapsed, there is so much
| corruption that electricity cuts frequently...yes, those
| white people again though...this is why Malema is popular).
|
| Seven, it was reasonable for de Klerk to be wary. What
| happened to Rhodesia? Everyone has this idea that
| everything would be fine, just trust Mandela...okay, there
| is a country next door where you saw whites being
| slaughtered en masse when Zanu-PF took power. The country
| has still been ruined, but that didn't happen at least.
| ljsprague wrote:
| That's not why there's massive income inequality in South
| Africa. LOL.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > What actually ended apartheid was international pressure
|
| There wasn't any international pressure. There was a
| withdrawal of the continual and embarrassing _support_ from
| Britain and the US, the only people other than Israel who
| hadn 't been overly troubled by Apartheid. First from
| Britain, because as bad as she was, Thatcher was nauseated by
| Apartheid, then from the US who would have had to _actively
| intervene_ (as they are right now in a similar context) in
| order to preserve Apartheid. This was only 25 years after the
| US had ended its own legal Apartheid.
|
| The US political class was largely indifferent to Apartheid
| (aside from periodic expressions of mild disapproval of _both
| sides_ and condemnation of _Communist-backed terrorism_ ), so
| when they saw how the wind was blowing within SA ("fear of a
| civil war"), and that individual domestic politicians could
| be damaged or gain politically through their actions towards
| SA, the US supported the "coup" (as always) so they could
| keep doing business without interruption.
|
| So I'd instead say popular pressure among citizens of the US
| and Britain against their own politicians, and the resulting
| withdrawal of Anglo-American _support_. Everything else but
| "international pressure" I agree with totally.
| DAGdug wrote:
| " as they are right now in a similar context" You can be
| more direct about Israel's treatment of Palestinians! All
| it takes for evil to succeed ....
| anovick wrote:
| There's no similar context because the Apartheid system
| that existed in South Africa has no resemblance to
| today's Israel.
|
| In particular:
|
| - There's no racial segregation laws; an Arab-Israeli can
| travel anywhere a Jewish-Israeli can. In fact, Arabic is
| an officially recognized language by the state of Israel,
| and throughout the country, every public service has
| signs in Arabic alongside Hebrew.
|
| - Jews are not a minority in Israel, they comprise 78% of
| the population.
| kombine wrote:
| > Jews are not a minority in Israel, they comprise 78% of
| the population.
|
| You know exactly what we are talking about. Israel is
| running apartheid in the occupied West Bank, and many
| agree that Gaza has also been occupied too (before
| 07.10.23). And even the Arabs in Israel proper don't have
| the full rights that Israeli Jews do.
| oa335 wrote:
| > Arab-Israeli can travel anywhere ...
|
| That is simply not true. E.g. The city of Hebron is
| segregated by religion - see
| https://youtu.be/Z42HhaywhGQ?si=bTBhEFi5lgBJQX9v
| Qem wrote:
| > There's no similar context because the Apartheid system
| that existed in South Africa has no resemblance to
| today's Israel.
|
| According to Human Rights Watch[1], Amnesty
| International[2], and many other human rights
| organizations, the regime in Israel today is in fact
| recognized as a system of apartheid. Mandela himself
| shown a lot of solidarity to the palestinian cause[3].
|
| [1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-
| crossed/isra...
|
| [2]
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2022/02/qa-
| israel...
|
| [3] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nelson-
| mandela-30-years-p...
| McBainiel wrote:
| The tech side of this is really cool but I'd also like to read
| more about the non-tech stuff. I wonder if the sympathetic Dutch
| flight attendant is still alive or the guys who actually carried
| the Trojan horse books to Mandela.
|
| What an amazing story!
| tow21 wrote:
| Coincidentally I was reading this story yesterday:
|
| https://www.londonrecruits.org.uk/index.php/items-received-s...
|
| about the "London Recruits" in the 70s and 80s who smuggled
| books, leaflets, etc into apartheid SA on behalf of the ANC,
| doing so in such secrecy they didn't know each others identity
| until 29 years after the apartheid regime fell.
|
| Joy Leman, one of the recruits, was my late father-in-law's
| colleague.
| amelius wrote:
| Maybe in the future we can also see the code that ended
| democracy. (The FB source code).
| SkyeForeverBlue wrote:
| This is paywalled; how can I read it?
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Most paywalled articles on HN will have an archive.is link in
| the comments, pvg posted one here.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| https://archive.is/yK8Jb
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Interesting how the PKZIP password-protected compressed file is
| now easily decrypted in <5 minutes, but the original one-time pad
| is still as mathematically robust as ever.
|
| We could have had a very different history if they'd used DES or
| RC2 for encryption!
| rtkwe wrote:
| One time pads used properly are theoretically perfectly
| unbreakable. The problem is making sure no one ever uses the
| same 'pad'/keystream twice, that your pad generation is
| actually random, and that the pads never fall into the hands of
| your adversaries. (or if they do you've been diligent about
| completely destroying the used pads and the other end of your
| communications doesn't use the captured set of pads) They're
| just not very good at anything other than point to point secret
| passing and require a real world connection to distribute.
|
| So much of symmetric key cryptography is just trying to find
| creative ways of creating and recreating 'one time pads' so we
| can distribute the key material instead of the pads themselves.
| janzer wrote:
| > that your pad generation is actually random
|
| The one thing that stood out to me with the original blog
| post and a quick glance at the code was that it appeared as
| if the pad was certainly _not_ actually random.
|
| Could anyone that has actually understood it a bit more
| confirm or reject this?
|
| Edit: It seems that the random generation can be found
| starting here https://github.com/Vulacode/RANDOM/blob/d6a1a1d
| 694b22e6a115b... With three methods, one (RAND2) seems to use
| the basic interpreter rng more or less directly and the other
| two seem to be fairly simple prngs seeded from the basic
| interpreter's rng.
|
| I don't actually know what the state of basic interpreter
| rngs was in the early '80s but I would be fairly surprised if
| they're anything that is secure.
| rtkwe wrote:
| At the time PRNG was probably good enough. I wouldn't want
| to go up against the NSA today using the same entropy
| source but against South Africa decades ago it was probably
| good enough. Even knowing what PRNG source the original
| noise came from it'd take a hell of a lot of guess and
| check with cribs to come close to guessing the seed for the
| PRNG. That would be my first crack at breaking a OTP I knew
| was generated with a particular PRNG at least as a casual
| student of the craft. Generate huge amount of noise for the
| possible seeds and see if any names like "Mandela" or other
| known leaders suddenly pops out of intercepted messages
| starting at different points in the noise stream (and see
| if the rest of the message makes any sense when that does
| happen).
| janzer wrote:
| If the PRNG is good enough then shipping floppies full of
| PRNG output is very much unnecessary. Simply send the
| seeds used to initialize the PRNG thereby fitting many
| (~180k of them on a 720kb floppy) seeds on one floppy and
| save your couriers a lot of risk.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Encode the seed in the arrangement of a deck of cards...
| shuffle to delete.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The card deck can be the key and the encryption mechanism
| too with Solitare. It's not secure for longer messages
| but it should be sufficient for short messages. It's a
| delicate method though because if you mess up it can be
| difficult to impossible to recover the proper state of
| the deck.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire_(cipher)
| rtkwe wrote:
| You can already fit huge amounts of text onto a single
| floppy. Uncompressed it's around 1.4 million characters.
|
| That is a method though and it's basically what stream
| ciphers are doing, translating a key into a random stream
| that's then applies to the plaintext. One benefit of the
| true OTP though is you don't have to transfer the
| software and ensure it's generating the same key stream
| on both ends.
| pastage wrote:
| South Africa did buy at least some of Crypto AGs backdoored
| products, not sure when though.
| rgblambda wrote:
| >Working in the woodshop, he crafted mockups of the large keys
| that could unlock the prison doors.
|
| I got to here before realising this is the same guy portrayed by
| Daniel Radcliffe in Escape From Pretoria. Great film.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I remember the activist campaigns and the movie Cry Freedom about
| Steve Biko, another SA activist, had a significant impact on my
| worldview growing up. As revolutions and coups go it was clearly
| a success. I'd wonder how much of a role their electronic opsec
| played in it.
|
| I think it was the ANC and its activists organizing the coalition
| of other countries to sanction and isolate the government that
| ultimately caused it to yield power, which is the necessary
| condition for any revolution- it requires allies to be in place
| to support it for when it succeeds. On the ground, you only
| really need a few dozen people to seize some buildings and bank
| accounts, it's coordinating the external trade links to keep
| everyone paid and in their jobs while the top of the regime
| changes to new hands that's difficult. The opsec for that ground
| force just has to get most of them to their X day, where they're
| going to take casulties anyway.
|
| In the case of SA, it seemed like a matter of convincing other
| countries to do nothing, by persuading the world the govt were
| just racist villains, and convincing the National Party in
| government that nobody would intervene to save them if there were
| a civil revolt. That part was organized in plain view. Opsec is
| interesting and mysterious, but often less important than the
| stories we tell about it afterwards.
| kombine wrote:
| It appears we have gone much worse since then, with all the tech
| giants having presence in Israel and the code actually helping to
| perpetuate the apartheid.
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