Elonka Dunin is an experienced crypto expert and maintains a list of the world's most famous unsolved codes on her elonka.com website. Bestselling author Dan Brown even named one of the characters in his Da Vinci Code sequel, The Lost Symbol, after her: "Nola Kaye" is a scrambled form of "Elonka." She is co-founder and co-leader of a group of cryptographers who are working hard to crack the final cipher on the famous Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters, and in 2021 she was invited to give the TEDx talk "2,000 Years of Ordinary Secrets."

Klaus Schmeh is the most-published cryptology author in the world. He has written 15 books (in German) about the subject, as well as over 200 articles, 25 scientific papers, and 1,500 blog posts. He is a member of the editorial board of the scientific magazine, Cryptologia. Schmeh's main fields of interest are codebreaking and the history of encryption. His blog Cipherbrain is read by crypto enthusiasts all over the world. Schmeh is a popular speaker, known for his entertaining presentation style involving self-drawn cartoons and LEGO® models.