The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography in Mathematics&Philosophy&Astronomy

May 22, 2014 Kevin rated it it was amazing

From steganography to quantum computing, this book gives a brief discussion on the history of codemaking and codebreaking. The codebreakers of the past utilized their expertise in linguistics as well as some ingenious mathematical thinking. The codebreakers of the future will be masters of computer science; from programming on the software side to the quantum physics concepts in the computer's architecture. This book was a lot of fun. In the first few chapters, Singh makes it easy to follow alo From steganography to quantum computing, this book gives a brief discussion on the history of codemaking and codebreaking. The codebreakers of the past utilized their expertise in linguistics as well as some ingenious mathematical thinking. The codebreakers of the future will be masters of computer science; from programming on the software side to the quantum physics concepts in the computer's architecture. This book was a lot of fun. In the first few chapters, Singh makes it easy to follow along with the examples of shift ciphers while utilizing the narratives of real history to give breaks from the technical details. One thing I took away from this was how powerful frequency analysis is in breaking encryption. The early ciphers, Caesar and Vigenere, could be broken easily with some clever recognition of patterns in the ciphertext. Frequency analysis is so powerful that a cornerstone of codemaking is to make sure that the ciphertext is indeed random, and thus eliminating a powerful tool from the cryptanalyst's toolkit. In recent years, the necessity of public-key cryptography has emerged and number theory provides the ability for this to happen in our digital age.

There's also some cautionary tales told. Since cryptography was used primarily in military campaigns, much of its research was carried out confidentially. As a consequence, many great minds that contributed immensely to cryptanalytics died before they could be recognized for their accomplishments. Alan Turing, Charles Babbage, and many Navajo WWII code-talkers are a few examples. This also led to civilians "rediscovering" the accomplishments made by those sworn to secrecy. The encryption standard we know as RSA was actually discovered decades prior to RSA's genius application of number theory. Cryptography is as much science as it is art. The progress of any science in today's specialized society must be collaborative. It must utilize the expertise of linguists, mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists and other disciplines if future discoveries are to be made. The status quo of RSA and Diffie-Hellman key exchange is strong for the time being and quantum cryptography is a strong candidate to replace this standard when all of the logistical hurdles are cleared. Singh posits that this will bring an end to the cryptographic cat-and-mouse game with the codemaking mouse triumphing over the codebreaking cats. Will quantum cryptography guarantee perfect privacy? Or will the quantum code be just a few more scientific discoveries away from letting the cats out of the bag again? I look forward to reading more about these topics and I will certainly be checking out more titles by Simon Singh.

...more

Like · see review