Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government, Saving Privacy in the Digital Age, by Steven Levy

This book is part corporate history and part biography, describing how a group of mathematicians created the cryptography that allows us to safely buy books from Amazon.com and porn from, um, never mind. Thirty years ago nobody had ever heard of the NSA, the government agency responsible for decoding foreign communications, and they liked it that way. They quietly classified as much cryptological research as possible and kept the science in a backwater of mathematics. The growing distrust of the government in the late sixties coupled with the ascendancy of computers caused this to change, although not without a fight. This is the story of that fight.

I’m familiar with the Diffie-Hellman and RSA algorithms and remember the fiasco surrounding the Clipper chip, but didn’t know much of the background of these stories. Levy details the both discoveries of the public key infrastructure and the innovators themselves as well as the eventual showdowns with the government. While clearly slanted against the NSA (whom led the battle against public cryptography) Levy does a fairly good job of showing all sides of the problem. For instance, he discusses the national security ramifications of not being able to intercept covert messages and some of the huge cases that were broken due to our code-breaking ability. He also talks about the weaknesses of the algorithms we use today and describes some of the more successful attempts at breaking them. The epilogue was the most surprising to me; apparently a couple of spooks in Britain discovered PGP before we did, but kept it classified until just recently. I found this a very interesting read and recommend it to anyone wanting to understand more about the history of encryption on the Internet.

First Sentence:

Mary Fischer loathed Whitfield Diffie on sight.

The Code Book, by Simon Singh

Tjhg ncgdpe ghahkpdmkleqco nslnqcqsqcha ocdmejn (ohancnqeaqpx jedpkocai hae peqqej vcqm kahqmej) qh ghbeja Djeqqx Ihhb Djcukox qh tsqsjcnqco qmehjeqcokp fskaqsg kpihjcqmgn, qmcn lhhy ohuejn cq kpp. K bhosgeaq klhsq ohben kab ocdmejn djhlklpx ljcain qh gcab k bjx qjekqcne phkbeb vcqm mcimej gkqmegkqcon. Ncaim, mhveuej, mkn gkakieb qh kuhcb qmkq vcqm k vepp-vjcqqea nqhjx beqkcpcai ahq hapx qme noceaoe lsq qme mcnqhjx ht ojxdqhijkdmx. C thsab qmcn k tknocakqcai jekb kab bcttcospq qh dsq bhva kq qcgen.

Ncaim bhen ka ewoeppeaq rhl ht gkycai k mcimpx qeomacokp nslreoq uejx kooennclpe. C’ue jekb klhsq qme VVCC Eacigk gkomcae, lsq aeuej lethje mkb ka kddjeockqcha kn qh mhv cq vhjyn. Qme nkge cn qjse thj Bcttce-Meppgka, BEN, kab JNK—kpp qejgn qmkq ghbeja nhtqvkje beuephdejn mkue eaohsaqejeb. Qmcn djhlklpx vha’q gkye ge k leqqej beuephdej, lsq C oejqkcapx mkue k leqqej sabejnqkabcai ht vmkq jekppx ihen caqh mqqdn.

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RSS Aggregators are notoriously poor when it comes to supporting styles, so my technique of swapping out divs at the push of a button doesn’t work as I’d hoped. If you can read this, it is probably followed by the plaintext version of the ciphertext above. Visit the actual entry for the proper effect.

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From simple monoalphabetic substitution ciphers (consistently replacing one letter with another) to modern Pretty Good Privacy to futuristic theoretical quantum algorithms, this book covers it all. A document about codes and ciphers probably brings to mind a dry treatise loaded with higher mathematics. Singh, however, has managed to avoid that with a well-written story detailing not only the science but the history of cryptography. I found this a fascinating read and difficult to put down at times.

Singh does an excellent job of making a highly technical subject very accessible. I’ve read about the WWII Enigma machine, but never before had an appreciation as to how it works. The same is true for Diffie-Hellman, DES, and RSA—all terms that modern software developers have encountered. This probably won’t make me a better developer, but I certainly have a better understanding of what really goes into https.

What is this gibberish? For a book about codes, I thought it would be fun to encode my blog entry. I used a simple monoalphabetic cipher, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to decode—especially with the hints given by the embedded links! If you give up, !

First Sentence:

On the morning of Saturday, October 15, 1586, Queen Mary entered the crowded courtroom of Fotheringhay Castle.