Code Breaking 8
| Code Breaking: A History and Exploration | |
| author | Rudolf Kippenhahn |
| pages | 283 |
| publisher | The Overlook Press |
| rating | 8.5 |
| reviewer | timothy |
| ISBN | 1-58567-089-8 |
| summary | A readable, lucid introduction to encryption with an emphasis on WWII applications, but with a range from Caesar to PGP. |
The Big Picture
Lucidly, and in the way of great teachers who neither baffle nor condescend, Kippenhahn tells the story of how encryption and cryptanalysis has evolved through the ages, and sprinkles examples and reader exercises throughout. Unlike Singh's book, though, which starts its historical wanderings with Mary, Queen of Scots, Kippenhahn's draws the largest chunk of its examples from World War II. Given the scope and innovation in encryption that occurred in WWII, this can hardly be seen as a limitation. In fairness, that's not to say that many of his examples don't come from other times before or since World War II. Some of the hard to overlook techniques of encryption, as well several of the famous coded messages on which some of the turns of modern history have hinged are represented here. For instance, the Zimmerman telegram, probably one the most-pivotal, least-talked-about-in-school transmissions of the century, draws several pages explaining how the American and British espionage services ended up cracking the message which could have led to war between Mexico and the U.S.As the book progresses, examples from newer and older times (and contexts from literature to lovers' secret messages) are presented with enough panache to make you forget that this is a book about a topic which is often rendered dry as dust.
In taking this broad-sighted approach, Kippenhahn has opened his book to a wider audience than likely browse the computer-books section in the local Barnes & Noble.
Revisiting the two big wars of this century provides an excellent backdrop, but modern developments in secret writing are not neglected; the latter parts of the book include a description of several modern encryption schemes (usually using DES as the example), and a comprehensible explanation of public-key encryption.
Points to Consider
Everything is not perfect, though: Kippenhahn, for example, does not touch on some of the newest developments in encryption and cryptanalysis. The book was first published in English only in 1998, though, and it's hard to fault him for not attempting to delve into the possibilities of quantum computers for either side of the secrecy game.Interestingly, this work in a translation of a German text (Kippenhahn collaborated in Ewald Osers' translation), but as Kippenhahn points out in his introduction, it's more than a simple translation; the examples in many cases have been transformed from the original to work well with English words and frequency tables rather than German.
This book is definitely not aimed at experts who wish to pick up subtle points or learn the latest developments in encryption; instead, it's a historical overview which happens to teach the classic techniques of encryption and decryption through examples. If you want Applied Cryptography, buy that instead. (Or in addition -- no reason not to be well-rounded!)
The Upshot:
Back to the inevitable comparison to The Code Book: If you've read Singh's book, and enjoyed it, you won't regret reading Code Breaking, but it might be wise to browse it before buying, to make sure that similarities won't leave you with too bad a sense of deja vu. If you've read neither one, Kippenhahn's work is no less stimulating.- Secret Writing in War and Peace
- Hidden Messages and Codebooks
- Codebooks in World War I
- He Came, He Saw, He Encoded
- How a Monalphabetic Code is Cracked
- Caesars in Rank and File
- Keywords Without End
- Shuffled Texts
- From Coding Disk To Enigma
- Enigma's Secret is Revealed
- The Arrival of the Computer
- Encryption Quite Publicly
- Smart Cards, One-way Functions, and Mousetraps
- Appendix A: A homemade encrypting machine
- Appendix B: Your computer as Enigma
- Appendix C: How the three magic keys are determined
- Appendix D: PGP, the encryption program from the Internet
You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.
Doesn't sound like a limitation (Score:3)
As this was originally a German book I'm wondering if it might not shed a different light on the Nazi code breaking techniques used during WWII. Seems to me that the perspective shown here might be somewhat different than those that crop up in American texts.
Mordred
The Code Breakers (Score:3)
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...better book...
Was this review translated from German? (Score:2)
"For instance, the Zimmerman telegram, for instance,..." (enough "for instance"'s?)
"the examples in many cases have been transformed from to work well
The number of "though"'s is troubling to say the least.
Please. Learn how to proof read!
Re:Was this review translated from German? (Score:1)
Re:The Code Breakers (Score:1)
Re:The Code Breakers (Score:3)
Despite being a biography and published by Counterpoint, it also fails the 'lurid' test.
However the inclusion of material on halting, incompleteness & the possible source of the Apple logo, more than make up for the lack of goat links.
Comparison with Applied Cryptography? (Score:3)
Sounds like most your time would be well served checking out Applied Cryptography first and settling on the more historical books if you find that A.P.'s not your bag of tea (and it won't be most people's).
That said, everyone who programs should read the first couple of chapters, the section on politics and the afterward of A.P. Skimming the protocols is also a good idea even if you just have to touch a high-level protocol (like SSL) from a distance.
A.P. is already getting me excited about some new projects. I started trying to write a pure-Perl implimentation of Diffie-Helman, and found myself side-tracked on trying to do efficient prime-generation. I've no decided to fork off into creating a repository of example perl programs of which my "mkprime" will be the first. Perl is a vastly under-used teaching language with the best features of C++ (for hiding some of the more complex details like arbitrary-precision math), LISP (for abstraction and algorithmic clarity) and C (for access to low-level details).
Any suggestions on how to publicize such a site?
Applied Cryptography (Score:2)
Really, it's that good. Even the often-critical Slashdot reviews [slashdot.org] found it to be "Outstanding". If you have even a passing interest in cryptography, I'd highly recommend picking up this book [bestwebbuys.com]. Just don't buy it from Amazon [noamazon.com], please :).
Alex Bischoff
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