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

I was reading about cryptography somewhere and it recommended this book, which I subsequently purchased. Absolutely unputdownable! Cryptography and codes have been around for thousands of years, and you can follow the progression from the simplest, to a brief introduction of the totally unbreakable quantum encryption. Mary Queen of Scots plotted to kill Queen Elizabeth by sending coded messages to her accomplices. However, the Queen's code breakers could decipher everything she wrote and condemned Mary to death. Just one of the Amazon facts you will read in this book.

Simon Singh provides the reader with an overview of the history of cryptology and brings to the reader's attention events in history that would probably have had different outcomes had it not been for the achievements of some historical figures - mostly unknown to us today - like Thomas Phelippes who deciphered and forged an encrypted message to Mary, Queen of Scots, thereby forcing her to effectively sign her own death warrant, and Marian Rejewski who provided the groundwork on deciphering the Enigma machine before handing his research over to the British; his enthusiasm for the subject shines through at every page. He also aims to set the record straight for a few unsung heroes, mainly from recent history who, due to the secrecy act, were forbidden from publicly claiming credit for their work in cryptology at the time. Most notably amongst them is Alan Turing who helped crack the Enigma cipher, but also Tommy Flowers who single-handedly built Colossus, the precursor to the modern digital computer but who had to destroy the blueprints after the war, as well as Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson who invented the asymmetric cipher and public-key cryptography four years before the Americans but were sworn to secrecy. I also enjoyed his brief foray into the decipherment of ancient texts like the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Minoan script of Linear B, but Simon Singh's main achievement lies in his ability to bring across such tricky issues like key distribution, public-key cryptography and quantum cryptography in a simple and lucid manner to a mainly non-technically minded person like me. My only criticism and one that has got nothing to do with the author, is the fact that this book was written more than ten years ago when e-commerce was still in its infancy; since then the world has seen a massive leap in terms of financial transactions being conducted over the internet and even seen the arrival of internet banking and with it the need for ever better security for the individual and companies trading over the internet. I would be most interested to read a topical update in which he covers the last ten years and the impact this has had on cryptography.

Almost perfect for a layman's introductory book on cryptography/ cryptanalysis. 5 stars for all the historical introduction from Ceasar Shift, substitution/transposition, frequency analysis and linguistics, monoalphabets, polyalphabets, Vigenere and Babbage, Turing and the naval Enigma, but minus 0.5-1 stars because modern encryption/decryption techniques were a little rushed relative to the earlier historical half of the book and some applications were hardly mentioned. Interesting that Linear A and Etruscan had not been deciphered at the time this book was written.Although I bought this book late, and technology has advanced since it was written, I was hoping to better understand encryption in the fields of computer science and technology (authentication and certificates on the internet, hashing of passwords, credit card technology...). There was a good intro on RSA and PGP, and I enjoyed the ending on photon traps and quantum computing. I wish there had been a little more on number theory (primes), a comparison of the many modern standards, the use of analysis in digital forensics, ...something a little more technical but maybe there are other books for that.There are some dubious claims in the book that GCHQ invented asymetric public-key encryption 'before' Diffie-Hellman-Merkle and Rivest-Shamir-Aldeman. The claim being made is that GCHQ invented it shortly before (whatever they say, right?), but could not disclose their invention for reasons of national security. I realise that this story was put out in 1997 by GCHQ and not Simon Singh, but where is the evidence?What is more likely is that there were reasons of national security for not disclosing that, despite the huge budgets, the shadowy cold-war era monoliths GCHQ (and NSA) were totally outwitted by a handful of freedom loving academics like Whitfield Diffie, who saw this technology as a means of protecting free speech and, therefore, democracy.Kudos to Simon Singh for stating his suppor for the use of Zimmermann's PGP in the book.The book concludes with a multiple stages code cracking challenge, which starts very easy and gets harder (there was a cash prize at the time).

Great book if you have any interest in encryption. Covers from the early days of hiding messages by writing them on someones bald head before allowing the hair to grow all the way to the engima machine in world war 2. Book isnt too heavy for those who are not mathamaticians but explains modern encryption topics in an easily accessable way. Highly recommend it.

Having previously worked with encryption systems, I first read this book many years ago in order to get a better understanding of the underpinning principles of cryptography. As others have already conveyed, Simom Singh produced a very approachable book which neatly balanced the tasks of providing enough technical explanation of a very complex subject while avoiding the trap of overwhelming more 'casual' readers. Highly recommended!