Alice and Bob are the two hypothetical people that crypto and security hackers use when describing security problems and solutions; John Gordon’s after-dinner speech on their private lives from the Zurich Seminar in 1984 is nerd-humor gold.
Now there are hundreds of papers written about Alice and Bob. Over the years Alice and Bob have tried to defraud insurance companies, they have played poker for high stakes by mail, and they have exchanged secret messages over tapped telephones.
If we put together all the little details from here and there, snippets from lots of papers, we get a fascinating picture of their lives. This may be the first time a definitive biography of Alice and Bob has been given. In papers written by American authors Bob is frequently selling stock to speculators. From the number of stock market deals Bob is involved in we infer that he is probably a stockbroker.
However from his concern about eavesdropping he is probably active in some subversive enterprise as well. And from the number of times Alice tries to buy stock from him we infer she is probably a speculator.
Alice is also concerned that her financial dealings with Bob are not brought to the attention of her husband.
So Bob is a subversive stockbroker and Alice is a two-timing speculator.
(via Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)