The First World War was the chemists’ war, because mustard gas and chlorine were employed for the first time. The Second World War was the physicists’ war, because the atom bomb was detonated. The Third World War would be the mathematicians’ war, because mathematicians will have control over the next great weapon of war—information. Mathematicians have been responsible for developing the codes that are currently used to protect military information. ~ Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
Thoughts
Over the years he (Babbage) accumulated a thick file of encrypted messages, which he planned to use as the basis for an authoritative book on cryptanalysis, entitled “The Philosophy of Decyphering”. The book would contain two examples of every kind of cipher, one that would be broken as a demonstration and one that would be left as an exercise for the reader.
When I was reading through the above passage, it occurred to me that this is what Simon Singh was doing - Creating a book about deciphering! Full credit to him for weaving interesting tidbits from history and making the book an engaging whodonit story.
The best parts are the way the ciphers are broken down and explained that any one could easily understand. Even without the explanations of deciphering specific ciphertext (if you want to skip over that), just the history is fascinating.
I was surprised (or may be not) that the book started with the story of Mary, the Queen of Scots. I feel that retelling of the stories of Mary, the Queen of Scots, Willam Wallace (Braveheart), Jacobite revolution (Outlander) and other martyrs in the last couple of decades through movies, TV series and books, have made the public feel a kind of kinship with Scotland. There is a kind of romantic allure to Scotland. What better way to hook a reader to a book than start with a story connected to Scotland!
Another great thing is, he makes it all so simple and easy to understand something that was otherwise out of the reach for most. He does mention that in the modern age, it is more relevant to everyday life than in the past. Here is a quote from the book -
“Cryptography used to be an obscure science, of little relevance to everyday life. Historically, it always had a special role in military and diplomatic communications. But in the Information Age, cryptography is about political power, and in particular, about the power relationship between a government and its people. It is about the right to privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of political association, freedom of the press, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom to be left alone.”
Notes
Introduction
1 The Cipher of Mary Queen of Scots
Mary the Queen of Scots’s life is on the line. people in the court of Queen Elizabeth are trying to prove that Mary committed treason. The proof hinges on deciphering a secret message that Mary sent to one of her followers.
- The Evolution of Secret Writing
- The Arab Cryptanalysts
- Cryptanalyzing a Ciphertext
- Renaissance in the West
- The Babington Plot
The birth of cryptography, the substitution cipher and the invention of codebreaking by frequency analysis
2 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable (The indecipherable cipher)
The Vigenère cipher, why cryptographers seldom get credit for their breakthroughs and a tale of buried treasure
3 The Mechanization of Secrecy
The Zimmermann telegram, the Enigma machine and how cryptography changed the courses of World Wars I and II
4 The Language Barrier
The impenetrability of unknown languages, the Navajo code talkers of World War II and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs
5 Alice and Bob Go Public
Modern cryptography, the solution to the so-called key-distribution problem and the secret history of nonsecret encryption
6 Pretty Good Privacy
The politics of privacy, the future of cryptography and the quest for an uncrackable code