''The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography'' is a book by Simon Singh, published in 1999 by Fourth Estate and Doubleday. ''The Code Book'' describes some illustrative highlights in the history of

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

, drawn from both of its principal branches,

code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communicati ...

s and

cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...

s. Thus the book's title should not be misconstrued as suggesting that the book deals only with codes, and not with ciphers; or that the book is in fact a codebook.

''The Code Book'' covers diverse historical topics including the Man in the Iron Mask,

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

cryptography,

Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...

, the mechanisation of cryptography, the

Enigma machine The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the W ...

, and the decryption of

Linear B Linear B is a syllabary, syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest Attested language, attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examp ...

and other ancient writing systems. Later sections cover the development of

public-key cryptography Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...

. Some of this material is based on interviews with participants, including persons who worked in secret at

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. Primar ...

. The book concludes with a discussion of "

Pretty Good Privacy Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption software, encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for digital signature, signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, Email, e-mail ...

" (PGP),

quantum computing A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of wave-particle duality, both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using s ...

, and

quantum cryptography Quantum cryptography is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. The best known example of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution, which offers an information-theoretically secure soluti ...

. The book announced a "cipher challenge" of a series of ten progressively harder ciphers, with a cash prize of £10,000, which has since been won. The book is not footnoted but has a "Further Reading" section at the end, organized by chapter.

References

Bibliography

*
Of Riddles Wrapped in Enigmas
,

Whitfield Diffie Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie ForMemRS (born June 5, 1944) is an American cryptographer and mathematician and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography along with Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle. Diffie and Hellman's 1976 paper ''New Dire ...

, '' The Times Higher Education Supplement'', September 10, 1999, p. 25. Retrieved 2009-02-19. * A critical review of the book:
The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography, reviewed by Jim Reeds
, Jim Reeds, ''

Notices of the American Mathematical Society ''Notices of the American Mathematical Society'' is the membership journal of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), published monthly except for the combined June/July issue. The first volume was published in 1953. Each issue of the magazine ...

'', vol. 47, no. 3, March 2000, pp. 369–372. Retrieved 2009-02-19. (61 KB PDF).

External links

"The Code Book" web page
at Simon Singh's site * , set up by the solvers of the Ten Cipher Code Challenge in "The Code Book"] {{DEFAULTSORT:Code Book, The 1999 non-fiction books Cryptography books Books by Simon Singh Popular mathematics books English-language non-fiction books Fourth Estate books Doubleday (publisher) books

Contents

See also

References

Bibliography

External links