Elonka Dunin in the News
(Page last modified, October 13, 2011)

Personal Articles/Interviews
Cryptography News
Steganography, Kryptos, PhreakNIC v3.0 Code

Convention Appearances
GDC, SimuCon, Dragon*Con, PhreakNIC
Space Probes
Planetary Society-related info
Other Game Stuff
Press Releases and other credits
Television/radio appearances
Audio and video files
 
Calendar of upcoming appearances
  

Personal Articles/Interviews

Major Interviews

Other related articles (I'm mentioned briefly or not-so-briefly in these):

Cryptography-Related News

Famous Unsolved Codes

In December 2003, after a fair amount of research and correspondence with other cryptologists, I posted a list of Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers. In my opinion, it's the most comprehensive such list on the web.

The Cyrillic Projector Code

Kryptos

Steganography

In early 2002, I was invited to speak on cryptography at a government taskforce meeting. I went over the history of steganography, and discussed the rumors about whether or not Al Qaeda might have been using steganography to send hidden messages (I don't think they were). After I spoke in St. Louis, I found myself getting invited all over the country (including to CIA Headquarters!) to give the talk in other places. You can see the slides of my presentation here, and some of the media/links related to the talk are as follows:

PhreakNIC v3.0 Code Tutorial

In July 2000 I heard about an "as yet unbroken" Code that had been posted by the hacker group se2600.  The code (visible at http://www.phreaknic.org/phreaknic.txt) had been unbroken since it was posted in mid-1999. I took a look at it in late July, and, with some fairly intense effort, cracked it in 10 days.  :)  As my prize, I won free VIP access to the group's hacker convention, PhreakNIC v4.0.  That meant free hotel, free drinks, free T-shirts, etc. The Code's author, a Nashville hacker and DJ who goes by the handle of JonnyX, asked me to post an explanation of how I cracked the Code.  I did so, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek "cyberpunk tutorial" fashion, over the following six weeks.  The complete tutorial can be seen here.

The St. Louis Linux/Unix community wrote up my accomplishment in their October CRONicle newsletter.

For those who are interested in the Code: It turned out to be a series of over a dozen puzzles, using several different types of cryptography.  Some of the cryptographic techniques were ones that I knew about before starting my attempt on the Code, and some I didn't.  By the end of the process of solving it though, I'd learned quite a bit. If you have any interest in cryptography (even if you don't know too much about it), I highly recommend taking a look at the Code Tutorial.  You won't need super-computers to solve the Code, and you won't need to learn the complex math behind the encryption methods.  Everything in it is solvable either with word-play techniques (such as cryptograms and anagrams), or with publicly-available software utilities such as a PGP encoder.  All in all, the Code is a fun ride, and I recommend giving it a shot.  Lastly, kudos (and mad props!) to JonnyX for writing it.  :)

Convention Appearances

Computer Game Developers' Conference

Every year I try to attend the annual Computer Game Developers' Conference in California.  This has evolved from a tiny "living room gathering" of game developers several years ago, to its current massive state which takes over the Convention Center.  One way to tell how long someone has been attending the conference, is to listen to what they call it.  Oldtimers like me refer to it as "DevCon," then it morphed to "CGDC," and now it's the "GDC."  I really look forward to this convention each year, as it's a way to stay connected with my peers throughout the industry.  Sure, sometimes my company is in competition with their company, but I don't see them as enemies, I see them more as "honorable competitors."  We love to get together and share a drink and talk over the war stories that we all have about the trials and tribulations of managing massive online communities.  My fellow DevCon attendees are my pals, no matter which company they work for, and I can't wait to buy the next round for them.  Cheers!

Here's info about when Mike Perry from Maxis and I were featured speakers at the 2003 Game Developers Conference

Dragon*Con

SimuCon

This is probably my favorite event each year:  SimuCon, our annual convention in St. Louis, when hundreds of players and GameMasters come from all over the world to meet, party, drink, gab, dance, and in general have a fantastic time for a few days. There are many many websites floating around, with hundreds of pictures. For a representative sample, check out this page that points to the official memory sites from SimuCon pasts:  "Memories" (I'm usually listed under Elonka or Nova). I've also got several pictures up at my main pics directory:

2003: Check out Kirafern's page for the most complete list of SimuCon 2003 picture sites so far!

PhreakNIC

I was one of the speakers at the annual Nashville hacker/technology convention PhreakNIC v4.0, and gave a presentation there on how to crack the PhreakNIC v3.0 code.

Hacker Threads gave my talk a very positive review on their PhreakNIC 6 page.

Recent/Upcoming Appearances

List moved to here.

SpaceProbes - The Planetary Society - Antarctica (and Mars!)

Did you know?  My name is on a microchip that was launched into space aboard a probe -- Stardust -- that is going to rendezvous with a comet, collect a sample, and then return to Earth.  Click here to see the NASA website that proves it!  The probe was launched on February 7, 1999, and is scheduled to return to Earth in 2006.  Click here to learn more about it. My name is on that chip because of my association with the Planetary Society.  This is the same Society that organized my February 1999 trip to Antarctica.   When there's room on their website, they occasionally post information about the trip on the Planetary Society News webpage.  Another place to see pictures of our trip is at the site of my Australian-British co-traveler, Digby Tarvin (he's got such a cool name!).

2003 Update: My name's going to Mars! It launched with one of the rovers this year. If you think your name's on the rover too, check in this database to see if you're one of the 3.5 million names heading to become Martian!

Other Game Stuff

Hercules & Xena: Alliance of Heroes

I was Executive Producer for the creation and launch of our game "Hercules & Xena: Alliance of Heroes" from 1997-1998


Our play.net website


GemStone III Newsletter

1995: Volume 2, Issue 1 of the Kulthea Chronicle, an online newsletter for GemStone III, our flagship product.  As near as I can tell, this particular issue was published in early 1995, back when the game was based on the Rolemaster rules from Iron Crown Enterprises, and shortly before we launched our products on America Online.  We've come a long way since then.  Around the time of this issue, total simultaneous usage in GemStone III was around 50-75 users on a "big" night.  By 1999, we had several different games up, not just GS3, with total simultaneous usage more like 5000 users!  Plus we've got plans for our next big game, Hero's Journey, which will take us up into the hundreds of thousands!

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