Codebreaker The History of Secret Communication

by Pincock, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9780802715470
• ISBN10: 0802715478
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-03
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

From the time of the ancient pharaohs to the modern world of Internet banking, civilization has relied on codes and ciphers to keep its secrets. The 4,000-year history of cryptography has been a kind of arms race: Each time a more complex encryption has been developed, it has been attacked and, more often than not, decoded; and each time, in response, codemakers have produced tougher and tougher codes.Codebreakersurveys the entire history of codes through an eloquent narrative and an evocative range of illustrations, paying special attention to famous codes that have never been broken, such as the Beale Ciphers, the Voynich manuscript, the Easter Island code, and many more. Many great names in history appear throughout, from Caesar and Mary Queen of Scots, to Samuel Morse and Alan Turing. The narrative is based in part on interviews with cryptology experts, Navaho windtalkers, decryption experts, and law enforcement experts, and ends with a vision of the coded future via quantum cryptography.

Author Biography

Stephen Pincock is a news editor for The Scientist magazine, and a science columnist for the Financial Times magazine. A trained biochemist and science journalist, Pincock has long had a fascination for deciphering codes and for the history of espionage. He has written widely about the history and development of cryptology, technology, and science.
 

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION	8	(12)
CHAPTER 1 ORIGINALITY
From ancient Egypt to Mary Queen of Scots, via the codes of sex and religion. Simple substitutions, transpositions, and frequency analysis.
Unbroken Codes: The Phaistos Disk	20	(8)
Cultural Codes: Holy codes	28	(11)
Cultural Codes: Codes of the Kama Sutra	39	(5)
CHAPTER 2 INGENUITY
How mad monks, diplomats, and papal advisors turned cryptology on its head. The arrival of the codebreaking civil servants.
Cultural Codes: Rosslyn's secrets: hidden meaning in architecture and music	44	(5)
Unbroken Codes: The most mysterious book: The Voynich Manuscript	49	(13)
Unbroken Codes: The Man in the Iron Mask	62	(3)
CHAPTER 3 WITH	65	(26)
Technology triggered cryptology revolutions, from Morse code to Vigenère's autokev cipher, the Kasiski examination, and Civil War ciphers. Digraphs, Playfair, and Elgar's other Enigma.
Specific Codes: The ingenious Professor Babbage	70	(8)
Specific Codes: The Playfair Cipher	78	(6)
Unbroken Codes: Hidden treasure, hidden meaning—The Beale Papers	84	(4)
Unbroken Codes: The Dorabella Cipher— Elgar's other Enigma	88	(3)
CHAPTER 4 PERSEVERANCE	91	(36)
Sheer bloody-mindedness helped crack Enigma and other wartime ciphers. The Zimmerman telegram, the ADFGX cipher, Cold War codes, Venona codes, and the Navajo Code talkers.
Specific Codes: The Enigma machine	102	(8)
Specific Codes: Invisible ink and other tools of the spying trade	110	(6)
Specific Codes: Purple and Pearl Harbor	116	(11)
CHAPTER 5 SPEED	127	(24)
In today's electronic era, powerful digital encryption protects data against criminals. Public-key encryption, factorization, and the Data Encryption Standard.
Unbroken Codes: The Zodiac Killer	132	(4)
Specific Codes: Cracking Poe's Graham Magazine cipher	136	(10)
Cultural Codes: Codes in fiction	146	(5)
CHAPTER 6 VISION	151	(17)
Quantum cryptography is touted as being uncrackable; will it mean the end of codebreakers? Crypto moves into the realms of quantum physics and chaos theory.
Specific Codes: The cat came back	154	(4)
Specific Codes: Quantum cryptography—being in two places at once	158	(8)
Specific Codes: Quantum cryptography in a box of chocolates	166	(2)
APPENDIX: CODE CHALLENGE	168	(4)
GLOSSARY	172	(1)
INDEX	173	(3)
FURTHER READING	176