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The Code Book 50

Posted by JonKatz from the The-Golden-Age-of-Cryptography dept.
Simon Singh has written a readable and timely book about what he suggests is the Golden Age of Cryptography, complete with tales of code-breaking intrigue from Mary Queen of Scots to the NSA. Codes have dramatically altered the history of the world. Quantum cryptography will take the evolution of secrecy to a completely different level.
The Code Book
author Simon Singh
pages 401
publisher Doubleday
rating 8/10
reviewer Jon Katz
ISBN 0-385-49531-5
summary The evolution of cryptography, from Mary Queen of Scots to the NSA

Simon Singh has written a readable, comprehensible and significant book about cryptography.

"The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy From Mary, Queen of Scots, to Quantum Cryptography" (Doubleday, $US 24) chronicles the obsessive human interest in and importance of codes, from Elizabethan England to the intrigue-riddled halls of the NSA and the era of quantum cryptography.

Secrets and the codes that protect them are important. They've brought about the rise and fall of monarchs and won wars; in some techno-circles, cryptography is almost becoming a religion. Issues surrounding codes speak directly to the Net, computing, freedom, privacy and power. Singh, a British author, producer and physicist, wrote the best-selling "Fermat's Enigma," and directed a documentary on Fermat's Last Theorm that aired on PBS's "Nova" series.

From tales of buried treasure, to stories of how the legendary mathematician and code breaker Alan Turing secretly helped defeat the Nazis and how Navajos (called code walkers) used their language to fight the Japanese, Singh puts our contemporary fascination with cryptography into perspective. He writes crisply and logically, and an instinct for talking about cryptography in terms of its most interesting tales.

"For two thousand years, codemakers have fought to preserve secrets while codebreakers have tried their best to reveal them," he explains. "It has always been a neck-and-neck race,with codebreakers battling back when codemakers seemed to be in command, and codemakers inventing new and stronger forms of encryption when previous methods had been compromised."

This battle becomes increasingly more intense and relevant, as the free-wheeling structure of the Internet increasingly collides with the perceived interests of individual citizens, with privacy, and with the interests and operations of law enforcement officials and national security organizations.

Singh suggests that we are entering a golden age of cryptography. He quotes one cryptographer as saying: "It is now possible to make ciphers in modern cryptography that are really, really out of reach of all known forms of cryptanalysis. And I think it's going to stay that way." This view, writes Singh, is supported by one of the NSA's Deputy Directors, who told him: "If all the personal computers in the world - approximately 260 million computers - were to be put to work on a single PGP encrypted message, it would take on average an estimated 12 million times the age of the universe to break a single message."

"The Code Book" even ends with "The Cipher Challenge: 10 Steps to $15,000." Singh offers a code -breaking challenge in 10 separate stages. I'll pass, but some of you might want take a shot at it.

Cryptography is a complex, even arcane subject for laypeople and non techno-heads to read about it. To Singh's credit, he's written a book that cryptographers and newbies can love equally. "The Code Book" unlocks the sometimes impenetrable complexity that surrounds cyptography, an achievement all its own.

You can pick this book up at Amazon.
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The Code Book

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  • One time pads are unbreakable. But you need a secure way to distribute the keys and you need 1 bit of key for each bit of data you want to send.

    So there are some very difficult bits that have
    to be delt with to make it work.

  • One time pads aren't used for everything. One time pads are theoretically completely unbreakable but in practice they suffer from a few problems mostly relating to the delivery system.

    One time pads work by adding a number modulo 26 (or however many characters are in the alphabet used) and transmitting the result. For each character in the message (or bit etc.) you need one truly random character (or bit etc.). On the receive side the same set of random information and same process is used to decrypt the message.

    Somehow two sites must be able to agree on a set of random information for the encryption/decryption process. The random information has to be truly random with no biases (i.e. flip a coin, heads are 1, tails are 0, not use some complex mathematical function. The flipper has to be honest, he has to faithfully report the stream of heads and tails. If he notices that a lot of heads have happened he can't influence the bit stream to be more evenly distributed) The transmit and receive side both have to destroy the pads as used. The mechanics of it make one time pads unwieldly for a lot of classes of information. You could theoretically for instance distribute N copies of the one time pad to N sites but then you increase the chance of intercepting the pads proportionally. As a result its better for point to point broadcasting as opposed to a multi-point broadcast.

    As a result there is a lot of information still encrypted and transmitted by governments that isn't one time pad encrypted, much of which is useful to the NSA. The NSA doesn't just deal in encrypted material either, sometimes regional news or the lack thereof broadcasted is important information.
  • Unfortunately, they are highly impractical simply because you may only use them once and you must use the right pad.

    We can assume that in the not too distant future technology is able to fit enormous amounts of data in a small space.
    Read this article [xerox.com] by Richard Feynman, where he states

    I have estimated how many letters there are in the Encyclopaedia, and I have assumed that each of my 24 million books is as big as an Encyclopaedia volume, and have calculated, then, how many bits of information there are (10^15). For each bit I allow 100 atoms. And it turns out that all of the information that man has carefully accumulated in all the books in the world can be written in this form in a cube of material one two-hundredth of an inch wide--- which is the barest piece of dust that can be made out by the human eye. So there is plenty of room at the bottom! Don't tell me about microfilm!

    Even if our technology does not come so far soon, it is obvious that we can expect small portable datastores with capacity good enough for creating usable One Time Pads.

  • You've missed the point. The main problem with the OTP is not storing the pad, or even generating it (diode noise or some other physical random event will do); it's the fact that you have to get a copy of the pad to both the sender and the receiver.

    I don't think so. Handing out an OTP of that kind (imagine something like a palm pilot) is as easy/complicated as handing out a metal key.

    You also can't reuse a pad between two people you want to talk to

    I was talking about an obscene amount of information stored in the OTP (comparable to the information of all books written). This could avoid the need for reuse.

  • Just picked up The Code Book after finishing off Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I'm only about half way through, but some good stuff already.

    I'd never really heard the details of Turing's later life. It's absolutely tragic that we lost such a genius at such a young age.
  • It is true that a one time pad is perfectly secure; One can even prove it. Unfortunately, they are highly impractical simply because you may only use them once and you must use the right pad. So if you want to distribute a lot of data, and perhaps communicate with many different parties, the one time pad is not the way to go.

    Lars

    Lars

    --
  • First off, I'd like to say that I *loved* this book. I had just finished Cryptonomicon (where my favorite part of the book was the World War II cryptanalysts adventures) and was primed for some in depth exploration of cryptography. Singh has written a broad-ranging but highly accessible book. I have some issues with his views of finality on quantum cryptography, but as a whole the book was intelligent and well written.

    Anyhow, so of course I jumped in on the cipher challenge at the end of the book. The first two were easy, Stage 1 solved in minutes with vi and a quick series of %s/D/a/g type commands, and Stage 2 with a small perl script [danger-island.com].

    I've coded up a quick and messy java app with a horrible interface to help out on Stage 3 (I think I need more help though, it might be in German. Luckily my girlfriend is Austrian). In the spirit of sharing with the /. community I've made the java app and the OCR-scanned-in cipher texts available on my web site [danger-island.com]. The applet link is not working yet, but you can download the source and compile yourself. It runs as an application too.

    Finally, I also have set up a mailing list for anyone who wishes to discuss or collaborate on the cipher challenge. The subscribe info is on the web site [danger-island.com].

  • Go to Cody's on Telegraph. They have autographed copies for sale ~$20 or less I think it was. That's where I got mine.
  • Turings entire life is equally fascinating - read Andrew Hodges biography and you will always wonder what else he would have accomplished had he lived in a more tolerant and enlightened age.

  • Is that they require both ends of the conversation to have known in advance they want secure communications.

    Public key based systems, OTOH, allow two formerly unconnected parties to start a secure conversation from scratch. If they have somebody they both trust for identification, they can even be sure who they're talking to, but even without the latter they can at least have a private conversation.

  • The book was called "Fermat's Last Theorem" in the UK and the TV programme (which won an award IIRC - it was very good) was shown on Horizon.

    Incidentally, I've always realised that all the Horizon and Equinox programmes were a joint effort between the UK/US/Australia/NZ but how much are they tailored for each country? We always seem to get a British voice-over but there often seems to be token British content in a predominantly US-centric programme :-)

    Oh, and where is "The Arts & Entertainment Network"?
  • OTPs are popular with diplomats and spys. The Soviet Union switched to OTPs for diplomatic traffic many years ago (before World War II). They screwed up for a period during World War II by issuing duplicate pages to some government organizations. This was probably due to the increased requirement for OTPs caused by the huge increase in traffic during the war. The USA took advantage of this mistake (see Venona project) and cracked many messages that were encrypted with the duplicate pages.

    OTPs have never been popular with military users. The level of traffic is too high and key distribution is a major problem. Today the problem is even worse. Not only are text messages being encrypted, but digitized voice and large quantities of computer/image data are traversing military networks.

    OTPs are great if you have low volume, high security requirements and a reliable key distribution system such as a diplomatic pouch or trusted courier.

    Machine (to include computers) ciphers are used for the vast majority of encrypted communications.

  • The USA had SIGABA, a more complex rotor machine than the Enigma. I've never seen a detailed description of the SIGABA, just general overviews.

    The Brits had the Typex, a rotor machine that was similar to the Enigma.

    The NSA has pictures of these machines on their web page [nsa.gov].

  • Hmm, yes, Interetsing it is...

    *Yodify*

  • (In case you couldn't tell, I use the Yodification method of encryption. I find it useful for confusing 85% of the people I live near. :)

  • Simon Singh was also interviewed on NPR's Saturday Weekend Edition [npr.org] program. The RealAudio is here [npr.org].
  • I heard that Connection show. So much of a big deal about Enigma. Everyone wants to know about Enigma. Well, it was a big deal, and much talked about. But no mention is ever made about the codes used on the Allied side. Having recently read Leo Marks' fascinating and entertaining memoir, "Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War [amazon.com]," I was sensitized to this. Check it out - it's a good read. Mr. Marks made his own contribution toward shortening the war by three months.
  • A few notes regarding said switches:

    1) It would seem that since there are two filters - and an "allowable/expected" error will occur with these filters - that retransmission will amplify these errors. I suppose the satelite itself could perform some authentication

    2) The transmission method supposes two filters set to different "angles". If the sateliate is taking these packets in, then they *must* have the filters set to the proper angles as well. Is this not a very loud means of comprimizing this medium?

    I apologize for the possible newbie-ness of these examples, I'm just curious. [translation, don't flame the snot out of me]

    My .02
    Quux26
  • I like "cookie eaters".

    My .02
    Quux26
  • If the book was truly used only once and then discarded as an encryption key, then it is a true "one-time pad" and practically unbreakable. Other than by brute-forcing the encrypted data stream until it makes sense; (un)fortunately, if the message is long enough and encoding is done right (randomly enough), there will be several incompatible "sensible" translations! Hopefully they included garbage, punctuation chars, etc. - but still, cracking this is hardly done "without breaking a sweat." The minimal requirement for a one-time pad is that the number of letters circled in the one-time pad key book must be equal to or (preferably, much) greater than the length of the encoded message. And you can only use it once. And both ends have to have the same book with the same letters circled, with all the physical security risks that entails (better burn it and stir the ashes after you have sent that one message). That's why one-time pads, though very secure from decryption, are not often used....
    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  • 0/0 is IMHO indeterminate. therefore you get 2=1(?) where (?) can be 2. so, 2=2. yep.
  • It seems to me that, while all the attention in modern cryptography is on public-key and large-prime encryption, that only applies to a new breed of encrypter. All of the groups who have used codes throughout history (governments, intelligence agencies, etc) have quietly and firmly switched to the One Time Pad system, and completely ended the entire codebreaking/codemaking cycle.

    (For those who don't know, a One Time Pad is an encryption system in which a given (private) key is used once then discarded, giving codebreakers no sample to analyse for patterns)

    As far as I can tell, as long as the key is uncompromised, the OTP system is totally uncrackable. There is just nothing you can do against a key where each permutation is only applied once. Maybe this is why the NSA has been paying so much attention to private citizens, because it no longer has a chance to break government codes?

    Or is there an approach to cracking the OTP system that hasn't been considered?

    gnfnrf
  • To further explain the point about the rare book method for encryption...

    Yes, the book method sounds like it's a one-time pad. One can suppose that the book contains enough circled letters to run the length of a plaintext. The part about the book being a rare one is merely a question of key management, as it ensures that only that copy of the book contains a key, and that copies of the book will be hard to come by.

    However, I strongly doubt the key was used only once and then the book destroyed. I also have my doubts on the selection method used on the letters of the book. Whatever the method, this is certainly not even close to peudo-random series; the fact you're selecting letters from a given language means that some letters will be more likely to be selected than others. Some in-depth statistical or differential cryptanalysis on the ciphertext using some known plaintext attacks is likely to yield results very fast. Throw in a powerful computer and you're set to break what was once unbreakable.

    But my point is: the above argument invokes techniques, knowledge and tools for the cryptanalysis that were not available to the 17th Century cryptanalyst. As a matter of fact, he could not conceive them in his wildest dreams.

    With that in mind, it's hard to think that even quantum cryptography, which generates a keystream that seems random enough and prevents man in the middle attacks, will always remain secure.

    "There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

  • It's a pretty good read so far, I'm almost halfway through it. The historical annecdotes help to breath some life into what might potentially be interesting, but dry, material.

    I'd recommend it.
  • I was very happy with Singh's book about Fermats theorem. He managed to gather a lot of historical and bibliographical background and presented it in a fascinating way that had me read the whole book in one stretch.
    What i saw at amazon [amazon.com] and the excerpt from bookstore cool [bookstore-cool.com] made me real curious about this one.
  • The problem is, that only the true and final recipient of the message should employ the filters to determine the photons polarisation.

    One possible scenario is, to have an encrypted link to the satellite, decrypt there, encrypt anew and send the information elsewhere. This would mean that anyone using the satellite has to trust it's makers.

    Ideally you want only the true recipient to decrypt the message, thus you have to pass the Photons without determining their polarisation. A simple mirror would do the job but that would (apart from the problem that the photons now have to travel through the atmosphere twice) only link a few points on the earth's surface and give no 'switching' capabilities.

    The next problem is the path between your satellite uplink and the sender/recipient. Ideally the photon should travel from the sender to the recipient without it's polarisation being determined so it has to go from a satellite dish to optical fibre still without being measured.

    If there are devices accomplishing this feat i'd really like to see them.

    Other ways might employ interference between two photons and sending a 'translation' matrix to sender and recipient (so anyone may know the 'relation' between their photons, but only sender and recipient know the actual photons they sent), or devices sending two photons of unknown (but related) polarisation to two recipients (the measurement by one recipient would determine the state of the other photon).
  • Quantum encryption was covered [slashdot.org] on slashdot and the link [newscientist.co.uk] refered to one pretty comprehensive article how it could work.

    The problem of laser transmissions around the curvature of the earth was solved with satellites, though i would be interested about the design of switches that preserve the quantum nature of the transmitted bits, yet allow for routing.

    It also essentially stated, that errors during transmission are to be expected but a constant monitoring of a middle man would result in an error rate of 25%, so as long as the transmission errors are in the percent range, a middleman can either be detected or can only glance at a very small percentage of the transmitted bits which shouldn't result in usable information for compressed data transmissions.

    Another problem altogether would be a middleman attack, where the middleman can actively intervene in the link, posing as the recipient for the sender, decode, encode again thus posing as sender for the true recipient.

    Since quantum transmission relies on multiple transmission paths (a one directional quantum path and two directional transmission of reference data) routing this data along physically distinct lines and maybe even changing the routing during transmission could prevent such attacks.
  • I know it only rehash but jut in case someone didn't realize it OTP systems are only unbreakable if the private key is totally random. And that is a very very thin wall between legal access and illegal access. just remember random number generator are hardly random
  • How about "talk walkers"? maybe "code stalkers" or "code balkers" "balktalkers" ?
  • You make a similar comment to groups like L0PHT and the ROOTSHELL site, that is, if you break codes for a living (or for kicks), you don't ever say that something is (or at least, will always be) unbreakable. It may be infeasable for an attacker to break the code -- the government may not care enough about your taxes to decrypt your records; they'll just throw you in jail waiting for your hearing in 2 years instead ... :).

    Your neighbour won't find your old E-mails if they're PGP encrypted with IDEA because he probably doesn't have the tools or expertise necessary.

    On the same note, PGP and other software are only available in their present states because people in the profession (of large number theory and cryptography) are bothering to remain paranoid and move forward faster than analysis of the previous codes.

  • A few weeks ago, Simon Singh stopped in Berkeley for a reading/talk on the new book. I had the time, went, and it was amazing. He did a great job at laying out the concepts of cryptography and how they've evolved with and shaped society.

    One of the most interesting things that I caught was Singh's discussion of steganography--message hiding--and its tangential history. For all of us who've heard (or even claimed) that security through obscurity is no security, it's interesting to see that obscurity has quite a colorful history.

    I was also impressed with Singh's handling of the social implications of limited-access strong cryptanalysis (ie. quantum computing or NSA-only factoring algorithm.) I got to ask him about this and he had an interesting perspective on the global financial/militaristic effect this might have.

    Though I haven't had a chance to read any Singh, he's absolutely eloquent and certainly knowledgeable. I'd buy a copy if I could afford it (and I had the spare time to pick up any more books.)
  • For those interested in mathematical history, and a very readable explanation of various fields of information theory, I can strongly recommend, Fermat's Enigma, one of Singh's previous works. In addition, there are several appendices to "flesh out" some mathematical explanations.

    One of my favourites was a brief proof which was an example of the faulty logic used by people to attempt to get the bounty for solving Fermat's riddle, which proves that 2=1....:

    a = b
    a*a = a*b
    a(a) = ab
    a(a) + a(a) = a(a) + ab
    2a(a) = a(a) + ab
    2a(a) - 2ab = a(a) + ab - 2ab
    2a(a) - 2a(b) = a(a) - ab
    2{a(a) - ab} = a(a) - ab
    2 = 1

    So now you know.....
  • I would definitely agree that OTPs are too much trouble, but I disagree that Public Key Crypto allows two parties secure communication without any previous contact. You need to authenticate who you are talking to through some other means before it's secure. I can't know 100% for sure that someone hasn't broken into my mail server and modified the PGP key block at the end of Joe Blow's sig file. If someone is interfering with our communications, a third party can listen in without the knowledge of either party.

    The advantage is that to start a secure channel with public key crypto, you need method to authenticate that the info you are getting is from who you think it's from, but it doesn't need to be free from eavesdroppers (e.g. I don't care if someone hears me reading my PGP key fingerprint over the telephone).
  • How does Singh's book compare to David Kahn's monumental _The_Codebreakers_? I was wondering whether Singh was worth buying if one had already read Kahn? Is there a great deal of overlap?
  • First I want to say how much I enjoyed this book. Simon, if you read Slashdot (and I hope you do) thanks. The book explained to me many things. I found the explanation of Enigma particularly easy to follow, which was great because I have read a few other books on the subject and never could quite get my mind to grasp it all. My one reservation, however, is the minimal amount of information regarding the Allied code effort. Apart from briefly stating that the Allies used a more sophisticated code system and didn't make the same human errors that the Germans made, there is no more detail. Did the Allies use a similar technology? Were there different navel, airforce and army codes? Did the US and the Commonwealth share "trade secrets?" What attempts did the Germans make to decipher the Allies communications? In Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson has a German genius, Rudy, working against A Turing a crew, at least for a while. Is he based upon a real person? I guess the real question is, "is all this information still classified and unavailable for scholarly research?" Thanks.
  • It was code talkers in the book and code talkers on the congressional bill that was passed honoring them.

    hope that helps =D

    (both books are awesome, and if you enjoyed them you may also like Between Silk and Cyanide: A codemaker's war)
  • If you read the book carefully, it was not suggested that public-key systems where safer than a OTP system. The problem with OTP is distribution of the pad's. That problem is solved using a public-private key scheme.

    Another problem with OTP's is creating a pad that is random enough. As you might know, using a randomizer function in a computer is almost never really random. Although it is possible to create fuly randomized values for a OTP (considering creating the key and distributing it), using OTP it is definitely more expensive than using public key's.

    So for the latter, cracking a code from an OTP system depends on analysing one stolen OTP and trying to find the randomizer function that was used to create it.
  • I know he's got a Brit slant, and he never claims to cover everything, but I was a bit disappointed to find so little coverage of breaking the Pacific war codes, arguably a more difficult job than the Atlantic Enigma. It would be very interesting to know as much about the Japanese cipher machines as Enigma; he has written the clearest explanation of Enigma I have ever seen.

    --
  • They were "code talkers", not "code walkers".
  • You've missed the point. The main problem with the OTP is not storing the pad, or even generating it (diode noise or some other physical random event will do); it's the fact that you have to get a copy of the pad to both the sender and the receiver.

    You also can't reuse a pad between two people you want to talk to. (Unless you're only doing broadcasts.) Therefore, I have to arrange a secure line of communication (classically, a trusted courier) to send them a copy of the "I-them" pad, for every value of "them" with whom I want to exchange messages. I then have to mangage and keep secret all these different pads.

    Increased storage density or faster processors won't help with these problems.

  • I dunno, maybe working on crypto has made me paranoid.

    However, I find it hard to believe we have attained this age when crypto is almost on the threshold of total unbreakability. I think ciphers will always be broken, whether it is a simple Caesar cipher or quantum cryptography.

    It is a bit like warfare: yes, it's becoming increasingly hard to break a cipher, but as ciphers become harder to analyse, so does the public become more knowledgeable on the subject.

    In Ian Pears' novel 'An Instance of the Fingerpost', Cromwell's cryptographer uses a one-time pad whose key is a rare book, with some letters circled throughout the book. The key is the letters of the book. He then goes on to call the encryption scheme unbreakable. It was used by Kings and their spies to communicate safely.

    Yet, we break such codes today without breaking a sweat. I am citing this example to show that, although our methods are being refined, so is the tools of cryptanalysis. In the end, I don't think we'll ever have a 100% perfect method of encryption and key management. Perfect cryptography will always require vigilance, intuition, deep thinking and a healthy dose of paranoia.

    I'm not saying it's easy to break quantum cryptography (or, as it should be called, quantum key management.) I'm not saying it's not safe. I'm saying I doubt it'll be safe forever; it just seems safe now, as we haven't put a lot of energy into trying to break it yet.

    "There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

  • Navajo "code walkers" or "code talkers"? I've always heard the latter term.

    Also, not really related, but I saw that "Nova" episode about Fermat's Last Theorem. All I can say about it was that it was incredibly fascinating, it was very well done to make clear what's obviously a very mathematical concept to someone without a lot of deep math background, and that hard-core mathematicians have absolutely no life whatsoever.

    Next time your S.O. complains about you spending too much time in front of the keyboard, just get them to watch this show and see how those zany math-heads sit in their den/office doing not much more than doodling mathematic formulae on legal pads for as much as 18 hours a day, 7 days a week...

    -=-=-=-=-

  • those zany math-heads sit in their den/office doing not much more than doodling mathematic formulae on legal pads for as much as 18 hours a day, 7 days a week...

    Which reminds me of a favourite joke:

    The CompSci department had put in their latest request for a huge and expensive mainframe machine (this was the 1950s, remember). Exasperated, the university admin shouted "Why can't you be more like the Math department?! All they ever ask for is paper, pencils and wastebaskets! Or even better, the philosophy department -- they only ever ask for pencils and paper!

    Sorry for wasting your time really

    jsm

  • A quick observation regarding quantum encryption (Score:3)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Tuesday October 12, 1999 @05:19AM (#1621226) Homepage
    I'm not an expert in this subject, and I don't even play one on TV, but a number of the concepts underlying quantum encryption appear to be...well, somewhat sketchy, to say the least.

    While I accept that interception of a data stream is likely to cause modification to the underlying signal, so too should the natural chaos underlying any physical-realm transport. Any system even attempting to make quantum encryption a reality would have to be engineered to allow unplanned, non-predicted breaks in the link. Such expected breaks would be perfect opportunities for so-named "man in the middle" attacks, where the attacking agent would only need to compute expected replies.

    It appears that the actual synthesis of the quantum-tuned keysystems is where the real "magic" goes on, and I agree, it's a seductive concept to have the literal photons in a stream be intrinsically keyed to their destination. But in order for such a system to be perfect, excessive order and stability(the same order and stability that would be presumed to be missing in case of an attack) is required.

    In the meantime, the sheer inconvenience of this system still keeps pure mathematical cryptography in high demand. Even the best laser can not adjust for the curvature of the earth, and fiber isn't particuarly difficult to server *backhoe fade*. I can't really imagine quantum properties on radio signals, but then I'm not qualified to make that call. I do know back at Wireless '97, there were innumerable companies selling RF Fingerprinting technologies to combat cell phone cloning, but I'm rather sure the technology did not exploit quantum mechanics. ;-)

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com

  • Simon Singh was on theconnection (Score:3)

    by JeffL ( 5070 ) on Tuesday October 12, 1999 @04:59AM (#1621227) Homepage
    Simon Singh was interviewed on The Connection immediately after the l0pht show last week. It was interesting and the real audio can be found at here [theconnection.org].

  • Fluffy, albeit with a hard centre 8/10 (Score:3)

    by cah1 ( 5152 ) on Tuesday October 12, 1999 @05:14AM (#1621228) Homepage
    Simon Singh has a proven track record of writing about hard maths and science so that you don't need to be a hard mathematician or scientist in order to understand it all. His book on Fermat's Last Theorem is one of my favourites, I'm not a mathmo by training, I'm a CompSci so while I could follow it, it could easily have been way beyond my ken. It was more than that though, Singh caught hold of Wiles' drive and passion - something that most of us can empathise with, but sometimes you can lose because the project going badly or your boss is being a little too PHed. He reminded me why I'm doing what I'm doing.

    The Code Book isn't *that* good - but then I doubt it ever could be. He gets a little muddled himself in places and there are better descriptions out there on the work of Bletchley Park (although he gives the Poles more of their due credit than most), but there are some gems in there too. His background writing, the side-tracking on Linear B, the revelations about how Diffie-Hellman-Merkle (and even RSA, to an extent) were beaten to their marks by us Brits but because that information was classified until very recently no-one knows it .... I certainly didn't appreciate it until now. Which is the key to some of the gems - that much of what he writes couldn't have been known even eighteen months ago.

    He finishes with a look at the future and quantum machines - very topical and, a physicist by training, he seems more certain of his ground here - or maybe that's just because I know less about that than I did about the rest of the book.

    He does a great job putting codes, ciphers and cryptography into context - both more the modern world and way back whenever.

    If you're a cryptographer, this book will probably annoy more than inform, but I'm a sucker for pop science books and my knowledge of cryptography isn't so strong. I enjoyed it.

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