The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

by Simon Singh

It was definitively stated in 1883 by the Dutch linguist Auguste Kerckhoffs von Nieuwenhof in his book La Cryptographie militaire: “Kerckhoffs’ Principle: The security of a cryptosystem must not depend on keeping secret the crypto-algorithm. The security depends only on keeping secret the key.”