Creating codes by coincidence

BY SHAHD ALHAMDAN FOR some people coincidences play a major role in shaping their careers and future. Israa Ahmed Bakhsh, a Saudi female in her 20s living in Madinah, never imagined that school’s incidents could make her think out of the box and lead her to work on a social project. Bakhsh, who holds a bachelor degree in nursing, is currently unemployed and she is working on her cryptography project. According to researches, cryptography is the science of making and using secret writing, as codes or ciphers — languages hard to break or resolve. She is focusing on developing her own cryptographic language and codes and named it, “Esraa’s Encryptions (EE)”. Speaking to Saudi Gazette, Bakhsh who is passionate about several social development projects in the Kingdom, explained that the idea of her project appeared in 2008, coincidentally. Her hobby at that time was writing diaries and she was annoyed that she must tear-up and stash the written notes without no one knowing her secrets. “Because necessity is the mother of invention, I created my own cryptographic language, so no one can read what I am writing and I did not realize at that time that there is a special science for coding,” she said. She mentioned that during one of the English classes back then when she was at school, her teacher took her diaries. She said the teacher tried to read her notes but she failed. “After the class, she returned my diaries, and asked for explanations for my writing. So I answered her questions by explaining the idea of my project,” Bakhsh said. After this incident, she developed the project and then stopped after she got rejected in one of the competitions. In 2013, she went through the same process and she also got rejected for a second time. She discovered in October 2016 that the project that she kept developing was an existing science that is called cryptography. She decided at that time to work on it again and complete her project hoping that some government sectors could adopt it. Bakssh said, “Some of the obstacles that I am facing are the constant frustrations each time my project get rejected and a lack of resources and references in cryptography since it is one of the rare sciences.” She explained that society will benefit from her project since it will help increase credibility of schools and universities. She hoped that her project would help minimize the chances of producing fake and falsified certificates, manipulations in speeches and forgery of documents.