Worst of Wikipedia/Elonka Dunin

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Elonka Dunin
Elonka Dunin, 2006
Elonka Dunin, 2006
Born: Template:Birth date and age
Santa Monica, California
Occupation: Video game developer
Website:www.elonka.com

Elonka Dunin (Template:PronEng); (b. 29 December 1958) is a game developer[1] at Simutronics Corp. in St. Louis, Missouri. She is one of the founders of the International Game Developers Association's Online Games group, and was editor in chief on IGDA State of the Industry white papers.

Dunin has published a book of exercises on classical cryptography in two editions, and she maintains a web-site on the Kryptos sculptural cryptogram, located at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Although she practices cryptography as an amateur,[2][3][4] she is referred to as a cryptanalyst in several media reports on the Kryptos sculpture.[5][3][1] She has given several lectures on the topic,[6][7] and according to the PBS series NOVA scienceNOW she is "generally considered the leading Kryptos expert in the world."[8]

Biography

Dunin graduated in 1976 from University High School. She was enrolled as an undergraduate at UCLA, majoring in astronomyTemplate:Fact, for roughly one year, after which she joined the United States Air Force,[9] working as an avionics technician at RAF Mildenhall in the United Kingdom and Beale Air Force Base in California.[10]

Online games

In 1990, Dunin moved to St. Louis and began working for the online game company Simutronics.[11][10]Simutronics launched its own website, play.net, in 1997 with Dunin as Supervisor of Online Games.[12] In 1999, she held the position of general manager of Simutronics' on-line community.[13] Dunin was the product manager for GemStone III, executive producer for the Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess-based multiplayer game Alliance of Heroes, and worked on the development of most of Simutronics' other products, including CyberStrike, Modus Operandi, DragonRealms and the upcoming Hero's Journey. She currently is the "General Manager of Online Community". She is a founding member of the International Game Developers Association's Online Games SIG and senior editor of two of their annual White Papers on various aspects of the online game industry: "Web and Downloadable Games" and "Persistent Worlds."Template:Fact

Cryptanalysis

In interviews with GIGnews.com, Dunin said that in the year 2000 she cracked the PhreakNIC v3.0 Code, an amateur cryptographic puzzle created by a hacker group.[14]Template:Verify credibility[15]

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in 2003 Dunin was "leading the charge" to decode a Kryptos sister sculpture, the Cyrillic Projector.[16] An article in the periodical Science Now, followed by another in the journal Science, reported that Mike Bales, a computer programmer in Michigan and Frank Corr, a computer programmer in North Carolina had decrypted the ciphertext in September 2003, and that Dunin performed the final translation of the plaintext from Russian — a language that neither Bales or Corr knew.[2][4] The article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch details that Bales was "on Dunin's team."[16]

Dunin and Chris Hanson are co-moderators of a Yahoo group that attempts to decipher the Kryptos sculptural cryptogram, and she also maintains a comprehensive website about the sculpture.[1][17] Because of its location on CIA grounds, physical access to Kryptos is restricted. According to Wired News, in 2002, she give a presentation to CIA analysts about steganography and al-Qaida.[18] According to the same source, "[i]n 2002, Dunin was one of the lucky few who saw the works in person", and "she also made rubbings of the text". During her visit, "[a]lthough she wasn't allowed to snap photos of Kryptos while there, her CIA guides arranged to have an official photographer take pictures of her standing next to it."

The plaintext of the first three out of four sections of the message engraved on Kryptos has been publicly revealed in 1999 by California computer scientist Jim Gillogly. According to an article in The New York Times, in 2006 James Sanborn, the artist who created the Kryptos sculpture, contacted Dunin to point out an error in the decryption.[1] The error was caused by a missing letter x in the ciphertext, which was intentionally omitted by Sanborn "for aesthetic reasons, to keep the sculpture visually balanced."[17] Sanborn later confirmed to Dunin the correct plaintext.[1] Despite this progress, the last section of Kryptos remains undeciphered.

In 2006, Dunin published a book of 600 exercises in classical cryptography, The Mammoth Book of Secret Code Puzzles. An abridged version (400 exercises) was simultaneously published in the UK. The book includes a few details about Kryptos.[17] In July 2007 she appeared on the PBS program NOVA scienceNOW, as an expert on Kryptos.

Public speaking

Dunin gave talks on Kryptos and the Cyrillic Projector at NSA Cryptologic History Symposium,[6] Def Con 12,[7] Shmoocon 2006,[19] and Notacon 3,[20] and a talk on steganography at PhreakNIC 6.[15] She also gave lectures at Dragon*Con,Template:Fact, and the International Game Developers Conference.[21][22] She has been invited to be a co-host on the Binary Revolution webcast three times.[23]

Books

Co-authored chapters in white papers

  • IGDA Online Games White Paper, 2002. PDF
  • IGDA Online Games White Paper, 2003. PDF
  • IGDA Web & Downloadable Games White Paper, 2004. PDF
  • IGDA Persistent Worlds White Paper, 2004. PDF

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Template:Citenews
  2. ^ a b Template:Cite journal
  3. ^ a b "Enigmatic CIA Puzzle Kryptos May Be Flawed" NPR All Things Considered, April 21, 2006
  4. ^ a b Cyrillic Riddle Solved Science, vol 302, 10 Oct. 2003, page 224
  5. ^ Template:Citenews
  6. ^ a b <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"NSA Cryptologic History Symposium in 2005". kryptos.yak.net. Retrieved 2008-11-13.
  7. ^ a b Defcon 12: Kryptos and the Cracking of the Cyrillic Projector Cipher
  8. ^ Template:Cite news
  9. ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"Tommarello Interview with Elonka Dunin". elonka.com. Retrieved 2008-11-13. Elonka does not have a college degree, but has a wide breadth of practical experience to draw upon. After dropping out of college, she spent six years in the Air Force as an Avionics Instruments System Specialist.
  10. ^ a b Template:Cite news
  11. ^ Template:Cite news
  12. ^ Template:Cite news
  13. ^ Template:Cite journal
  14. ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Cambron, Melanie (2002). "A Chat with Elonka Dunin". GIGnews.com. Retrieved 2008-10-31. Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  15. ^ a b PhreakNIC 6 schedule
  16. ^ a b Template:Cite news
  17. ^ a b c Template:Cite news
  18. ^ Template:Cite news
  19. ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"ShmooCon". www.shmoocon.org. Retrieved 2008-11-13.
  20. ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"NOTACON". www.notacon.org. Retrieved 2008-11-13.
  21. ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"Dragon*Con Biography: Elonka Dunin". Dragoncon.org. 2000. Archived from the original on 2001-03-08.
  22. ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"Game Developers Conference 2008 Speakers: Elonka Dunin". CMPEvents.com. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  23. ^ Episodes #78, #99 and #156, Binary Revolution, interviews by David Blake.

External links

Template:Commons

pl:Elonka Dunin simple:Elonka Dunin

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