Conference Program
The Program Committee is pleased to announce the following keynote speakers:
- Dr. Sarah Mainwaring, Deputy Head Cyber Defence and Risk, UK Ministry of Defence
- Dr Daniel Shiu, Chief Cryptographer, ARQIT
Monday, 24 June at Kellogg College, Oxford
18:00 | Welcome drinks | Kellogg College |
Tuesday, 25 June at Kellogg College, Oxford
All events in the Hub at Kellogg College unless otherwise stated
08:30 | Registration | |
08:50 | Welcome | Michelle Waldispühl, Dermot Turing, Prof. Jonathan Michie, President of Kellogg College |
09:00 | Keynote 1: The legacy of Bletchley Park on UK Mathematics | Daniel Shiu, Chair: Dermot Turing |
10:00 | Early Modern I: 3 long papers | Chair: Carola Dahlke |
Deciphering historical syllabic ciphers | George Lasry | |
A typology for cipher key instructions in early modern times | Beáta Megyesi | |
What encryption errors can reveal: cross-cipher errors in Mary Queen of Scots’ letters | Norbert Biermann | |
11:00 | Coffee | Bar area |
11:30 | Early Modern II: 3 short papers | Chair: Elonka Dunin |
The keys to diplomacy: the encrypted correspondence of Saxon-Polish ministers Wackerbarth and Flemming 1700-1720 | Anne-Simone Rous | |
The enigma of Lorenzo Ventura’s cipher | Paolo Bonavoglia | |
The use of volvelles in two early modern cryptography manuals | Corinne Bayerl | |
12:15 | Early Modern III: 2 long papers | Chair: Camille Desenclos |
Demystifying La Buse’s cryptogram and the Fiery Cross of Goa | Carola Dahlke | |
Send someone to finish Fredenburgh’s works: a Dutch ciphertext (1689) from Suriname | Jörgen Dinissen | |
13:00 | Lunch | Bar area |
Machine exhibition I | Mawby room | |
14:15 | Philosophy and learning: 3 short papers | Chair: Gerhard F. Strasser |
French encrypted newspaper advertisements in the 19th century | Klaus Schmeh, Elonka Dunin and Didier Müller | |
The philosophy of secrecy: towards a historical analysis of cryptography, privacy, and information organization | Harry Halpin | |
Bringing cryptology into the secondary education classroom | Catherine Murphy and Aaron Wootton | |
15:00 | Machine learning: 3 long papers | Chair: Eugen Antal |
The TICOM DF-114 Cryptanalytic Device: a theory of operation and computer simulation | Magnus Ekhall | |
Artificial neural network for hoax cryptogram identification | Floe Foxon | |
Cryptanalysis of Hagelin M-209 cipher machine with artificial neural networks: A known-plaintext attack | Vasily Mikhalev | |
16:00 | Coffee | Bar area |
16:30 | Early Modern IV: 2 long papers | Chair: Beáta Megyesi |
An early French digit cipher: deciphering a letter from the King of France to the Duke of Nevers (1592) | Camille Desenclos and George Lasry | |
On the tracks of Félix-Marie Delastelle | Rémi Geraud-Stewart and David Naccache | |
17:10 | End of day | |
18:30 | Informal dinner | Venue to be advised |
Wednesday, 26 June at Kellogg College, Oxford
All events in the Hub at Kellogg College unless otherwise stated
09:00 | WWI/WW2: 2 long papers | Chair: George Lasry |
A new perspective on Dutch WWI codebreaking with its international ramifications | Bart Jacobs and Florentijn van Kampen | |
The band of the USS California at Pearl Harbor and beyond | Kyle Prescott | |
09:45 | Keynote 2: American encryption policy 1950-1990 | Sarah Mainwaring, Chair: Michelle Waldispühl |
10:45 | Coffee | Bar area |
11:15 | Bletchley Park, WWII: 3 short papers | Chair: Klaus Schmeh |
How the machines were assisted by women | Elizabeth Fricker | |
Lost in translation: missing background, contextual blindspots, and editing mishaps in translated intelligence content | Jaskoski Stephen | |
Overlooked, forgotten, misunderstood: the “other” SIGINT in World War II | David Hatch | |
12:00 | Mysterious and Modern: 3 long papers | Chair: Benedek Láng |
Sources of alchemical cryptography | Sarah Lang, Sergei Zotov and Megan Piorko | |
Subtle signs of scribal intent in the Voynich Manuscript | Andrew Steckley and Noah Steckley | |
Development of the block cipher LAMBDA1 in 1990 | Winfried Stephan | |
13:00 | Lunch | Bar area |
Machine exhibition II | Mawby room | |
14:30 | Poster session with coffee | Bar area |
Can artificial intelligence solve the mysterious anagram from the Church of the Poor Clares in Bratislava? | Eugen Antal and Pavol Zajac | |
From myths to methods: teaching cryptography with the Enigma machine | Tobias Baumeister, Felix Schmutterer and Dietmar Fey | |
Known-plaintext attack on polyalphabetic ciphers with LSTM networks | Oriol Closa | |
Exploring the alignment of transcriptions to images of cipher manuscripts | Goio García, Pau Torras, Alicia Fornés and Beáta Megyesi | |
Supporting historical cryptology: the Decrypt pipeline | Mihály Héder, Alicia Fornés, Nils Kopal, Ferenc Szigeti and Beata Megyesi | |
Decipherment of an encrypted letter from 1724 found in UCL Special Collections’ Brougham Archive | Nils Kopal and Katy Makin | |
Fake or real? A mysterious metal book on the market | Benedek Láng, Gábor Tokai and Levente Zoltán Király | |
Origins of NSA’s communications security mission | Evan Rea | |
Scherbius and the Enigma, 1925-1929. Reorganisation of Chiffriermaschinen AG, supplier to the Reichswehr | Claus Taaks | |
Cryptology and redaction: a strange symbiosis | Dermot Turing | |
Post-quantum trails: an educational board game about post-quantum cryptography | Jelizaveta Vakarjuk and Nikita Snetkov | |
Decipherment of a German encrypted letter sent from Sigismund Heusner von Wandersleben to Axel Oxenstierna in 1637 | Michelle Waldispühl and Nils Kopal | |
15:30 | End of formal conference. The remaining events at Kellogg are open to all. Plus-one ticket holders are especially welcome | |
16:00 | Polish panel and HistoCrypt 2025 | Piotr Bojarski and Marcin Słomiński |
16:30 | Introducing your day at Bletchley Park | |
17:00 | HistoCrypt Forum | |
Book sales | Mawby room | |
18:00 | End of day | |
18:45 | Conference dinner | St Peter’s College, New Inn Hall St |
Thursday, 27 June at Bletchley Park
09:00 | Coach to Bletchley | |
10:30 | Demos of Bombe and Colossus | TNMOC |
12:30 | Sandwich lunch | TNMOC |
13:00 | Bletchley Park Guided | TNMOC |
14:30 | Bletchley Park Guided | TNMOC |
17:00 | Coach to Oxford | |
17:30 | Bletchley Park Lecture | |
18:30 | VIP Reception | |
20:30 | Coach to Oxford |
Due to some last-minute changes, Keynote 3 by David Kenyon had to be cancelled. The program is now final.