After making a copy of the file, the hacker ran it through a code-breaking program that exposed the passwords as plain text.

FORBES: The Lawyer Hackers Call

For the film Enigma, he learnt the fundamentals of code-breaking to play Tom Jericho, a mathematics genius at the centre of the film.

BBC: Scot to play Dylan Thomas

Students tended to think maths leads to teaching or accountancy, when it could mean a career in Formula 1 racing, code-breaking or journalism, a spokeswoman for the consortium said.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Education | ?18m to inspire science students

In A Measureless Peril, long-time journalist Richard Snow takes us from the darkest days of 1942 to the eventual triumph of the Allied destroyers and convoy system (aided amply by code-breaking successes and new technologies like aircraft mounted radar).

FORBES: Booked: World War II's Battle of the Atlantic in "A Measureless Peril"

Quantum computers will not be able to supplant conventional computers until they reach a size of at least 100 qubits, and it would take at least several thousand qubits for them to be really useful for such heavy-duty tasks as code-breaking.

FORBES: Atoms Offer Giant Leap In Computing Power

There was a secret deciphering office in London, a successor to the Post Office's foreign letter office, and another code-breaking unit in the Admiralty, both of which cracked Napoleon's codes, as did the bureau noir attached to every European government (though the Austrians reckoned their best intelligence came from the emperor's pillow talk).

ECONOMIST: Napoleon and Wellington

Among the possibilities now being considered by the department are breaking the company up and licensing the Windows source-code to competitors.

ECONOMIST: Microsoft in the dock | The

The states so strongly believe they are right in the case that they are seeking "nuclear-weapon-like remedies" such as breaking up the company or forcing it to license the source code for Windows, Mr Kovacic said.

BBC: News | The Company File | Microsoft ruling imminent