Uncanny hacks-men to attend special school in grand country home

Bletchley Park to house student codebreakers after £5m refurb

The home of Britain's World War II code-breaking effort, Bletchley Park, is set to once again house young codebreakers with the first national information security college planning to open in the complex following a £5 million renovation.

The 73 year-old building will house talented 16-to-19-year-olds from 2018 as part of a security-careers recruitment strategy bankrolled by the not-for-profit QUFARO.

Gifted students will study in what is described as the world's most advanced laboratory for free, courtesy of Bletchley Park's National Museum of Computing, Cyber Security Challenge UK, BT Security, Raytheon, and the Institute of Information Security Professionals.

QUFARO@Bletchlley Park head Alastair MacWilson says the project will help unify Britain's "excellent but disparate" information security initiatives.

About 40 per cent of the curriculum will be focus on information security, balanced by maths, physics, and computer science.

Bletchley Park Trust founding member Margaret Sale says previous generations are "deeply proud" of their work at Bletchley Park and welcomes the contributions of the next hackers.

"Through initiatives such as the National College and the Cyber Investment Fund we can effectively combine the principles of heritage, education and innovation for which everything on this site stands," Sale says.

The students will work in Block G, a building that was home to traffic analysis and deception operations during World War II.

The Trust says [PDF] operatives in the building worked on output from Intelligence Service Knox and Engima, and played a "key role" in D-Day preparations through confirming the reciept of misinformation to German high command.

They also helped in later wartime traffic analysis efforts as the volume and complexity of Bletchley Park traffic increased.

The multi-story Block G has been profiled by urban adventurers and currently lies in disrepair. ®