Much like Dick and Jane were to 50’s era readers, Alice and Bob are the two hypothetical people that crypto folks and coders use to illustrate security problems and solutions. e.g. “Alice wants to send a secret message to Bob…” and so forth. Hundreds of papers have been written using Alice and Bob – they’ve tried to defraud insurance companies, played poker for high stakes by mail, and have exchanged secret messages over tapped telephones. A biography was inevitable…
[via bOing bOing]