In fact, you can download good cryptographic software from the Internet for less than the price of a good pair of gloves. Read The Code Book The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh available from Rakuten Kobo. Cryptography and gloves are both dirt-cheap and widely available. The former can frustrate FBI wiretapping, and the latter can thwart FBI fingerprint analysis. Cryptography protects data from hackers, corporate spies, and con artists, whereas gloves protect hands from cuts, scrapes, heat, cold, and infection. Cryptography is a data-protection technology, just as gloves are a hand-protection technology. From the best-selling author of Fermats Last Theorem, The Code Book is a history of mans urge to uncover the secrets of codes, from Egyptian puzzles to. citizen can freely buy a pair of gloves, even though a burglar might use them to ransack a house without leaving fingerprints. ' Any book on cryptography written for a more-or-less lay audience must inevitably face comparisons to The Code Book by Simon Singh, the king of distilling complex subjects to a few hundred pages of understandable writing.“Ron Rivest, one of the inventors of RSA, thinks that restricting cryptography would be foolhardy: It is poor policy to clamp down indiscriminately on a technology just because some criminals might be able to use it to their advantage. 'A fascinating meander through the centuries replete with tales of intrigue, political chicanery, military secrecy and academic rivalry.'

In addition to stories of intrigue and warfare, Simon Singh also investigates other codes, the unravelling of genes and the rediscovery of ancient languages and most tantalisingly, the Beale ciphers, an unbroken code that could hold the key to a $20 million treasure. The betrayal of Mary Queen of Scots and the cracking of the enigma code that helped the Allies in World War II are major episodes in a continuing history of cryptography. The Code Book by Simon Singh: 9780385495325 : Books.

From the best-selling author of Fermat’s Last Theorem, The Code Book is a history of man’s urge to uncover the secrets of codes, from Egyptian puzzles to modern day computer encryptions.Īs in Fermat’s Last Theorem, Simon Singh brings life to an astonishing story of puzzles, codes, languages and riddles that reveals man’s continual pursuit to disguise and uncover, and to work out the secret languages of others.Ĭodes have influenced events throughout history, both in the stories of those who make them and those who break them. Simon Singh 4.29 25,869 ratings1,559 reviews In his first book since the bestselling Fermat’s Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives.

Simon singh's the code book