This week, I got a couple of surprises from kids.
During the weekend, kids came to me and declared “we have passwords setup for our login accounts!” Spurthi is 11 now and Surya is 8, and their passion for using the login accounts is interesting. About 3-4 years ago, I gave them separate login accounts on the Linux PC I have. At that time, I created their passwords and told them how to enter it. Earlier this month, I bought them a new PC, with no passwords for accounts, mainly because it is not yet connected to our home router. Looks like they got bored of having accounts with no password. They created their own passwords!
This evening, my daughter came to me and asked if I can decode some cipher text. She didn’t use the word cipher, but the idea is the same. I spent some time to decode it and told her how I decoded it. Its a very simple substitution cipher with ROT-(26-x). Then she said she will use some other code and gave me a much tougher one. This is a cipher in which each two character tuple in alphabet is substituted for one another. Then we spent very short time looking at Chapter 2 of Security in Computing by by Charles P. Pfleeger and Shari Lawrence Pfleeger. She has exams for the rest of the week, so probably we will take a closer look at other cipher techniques in that book during weekend.
Pleasant surprises from kids!