David's review
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Although I gobbled up this book like the other Dan Brown books, it remains my least favorite. he simply doesn't know science, though he pretends to. He tells us that the National Security Agency got around the problem of decrypting potential enemy intercepts by building a computer with 30 million chips that could break any cipher system with brute force methods. Now bear in mind that each extra "bit" in the key doubles the workload (if one is using brute force methods to decrypt). Five extra bits increases tyhe work load by 32. Ten extra bits increases the work load by 1000 - well 1024 actually. 20 extra bits increases the work factor by a million.
That means that all one has to do to to soak up this extra computing capacity is add 25 bits to the key length and there go the NSAs thirty million chips!
He also claims - and this is relevant to the story - that it is a popular misconception that the bomb at Nagasaki was a Plutonium bomb. He says that in fact BOTH the Hirosh...more
That means that all one has to do to to soak up this extra computing capacity is add 25 bits to the key length and there go the NSAs thirty million chips!
He also claims - and this is relevant to the story - that it is a popular misconception that the bomb at Nagasaki was a Plutonium bomb. He says that in fact BOTH the Hirosh...more
