16 October 2013, BetaBreak

The BètaBreak of Wednesday, October 16th is all about cryptography. But what does it mean: cryptography? How can you encrypt your data, and how safe is it? What is the status of quantum cryptography? And how safe is digital data for intelligence agencies and privacy?

This summer Edward Snowden, a computer security specialist at the U.S. National Security Agency, blew the whistle on the practices of that service. Together with the British GCHQ they eavesdrop on much of the Internet traffic, including encrypted communications. They do this by forcing major Internet to transfer data, but also to crack the encryption or even weaken it beforehand. Thus cryptography - essential for safe Internet - becomes less reliable: for e-mail, but also for banking.

Wednesday 16 October, the BètaBreak will be in the central hall of the Faculty of Science building at the Science Park, and we will discuss these subjects with the following guests:

• Jeremy Butcher of the Crypto unit at IT security company Fox-IT, which in the Netherlands plays a key role in the investigation of and protection against IT security incidents.
• Rop Gonggrijp, editor-in-chief of the hacker magazine Hack-Tic, founder of XS4ALL, creator of the Cryptophone and captain of 'Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet' ('we do not trust voting computers').
• Christian Schaffner, assistant professor at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), and researcher in the field of quantum cryptography.

For more information, see http://www.betabreak.nl/