On February 7th, one of our Probus members, Keith Drinkwater, gave us a talk entitled ‘It’s a Secret!’

Keith, one of the Club’s founder members, gave us an unexpected presentation, as befits his topic title. He demonstrated in dramatic form a ‘symmetrical triple-pass encryption system without exchange of keys’.

Not as easy as it might seem, but Keith, through involving all the large audience, showed how to pass secure information from one individual (or organisation) to another through ‘hostile territory’, represented by the mass of members present!

A brief consideration of the implications this has for the use of computers sending secure messages over the Internet led to a discussion of the meaning of https: and the current interest and concerns about security and trust. It was agreed that people were the main problem – not the computers!