''The Radio Hacker's Codebook'' is a book for computer enthusiasts written by

George Sassoon George Thornycroft Sassoon (30 October 1936 – 8 March 2006) was a British scientist, electronic engineer, linguist, translator and author. Early life Sassoon was the only child of the poet Siegfried Sassoon and his wife Hester Gatty, who were ...

. The book explains how to receive international

radioteletype Radioteletype (RTTY) is a telecommunications system consisting originally of two or more electromechanical teleprinters in different locations connected by radio rather than a wired link. Radioteletype evolved from earlier landline teleprinter ...

signals, convert them with a circuit and then decode them on a

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

. In the case of this book the computer is the superseded

Research Machines 380Z The Research Machines 380Z (often called the RML 380Z or RM 380Z) was an early 8-bit microcomputer produced by Research Machines in Oxford, England, from 1977 to 1985. Description The 380Z used a Z80 microprocessor (hence the name) with up to 5 ...

. Programs to do these functions are given, written in

machine code In computer programming, machine code is computer code consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). For conventional binary computers, machine code is the binaryOn nonb ...

and

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

. However legal and moral issues relating to intercepting messages are not included. Other radioteletype subject included are the FEC and

automatic repeat request Automatic repeat request (ARQ), also known as automatic repeat query, is an error-control method for data transmission that uses acknowledgements (messages sent by the receiver indicating that it has correctly received a message) and timeout ...

used in maritime radiocommunications. The book also include an exposition of encryption, including the public key RSA cipher and presciently expounds on the lack of

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

in the

cashless society In a cashless society, financial transactions are not conducted with physical banknotes or coins, but instead with digital information (usually an electronic representation of money). Cashless societies have existed from the time when human soc ...

. Code examples are also given using the Sharp PC-320I to encode and decode the German

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 ...

. The books claims that the Enigma was kept secret for long periods because understanding it could compromise the American

M-209 In cryptography, the M-209, designated CSP-1500 by the United States Navy (C-38 by the manufacturer) is a portable, mechanical cipher machine used by the US military primarily in World War II, though it remained in active use through the Korean W ...

cipher machine, and that it was still being sold to other countries. Other encryption topics covered include

Data Encryption Standard The Data Encryption Standard (DES ) is a symmetric-key algorithm for the encryption of digital data. Although its short key length of 56 bits makes it too insecure for modern applications, it has been highly influential in the advancement of cryp ...

Vernam cipher Vernam is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Charles Vernam (born 1996), English professional footballer *Gilbert Vernam (1890–1960), invented an additive polyalphabetic stream cipher and later co-invented an automated one-tim ...

(

one-time pad The one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be Cryptanalysis, cracked in cryptography. It requires the use of a single-use pre-shared key that is larger than or equal to the size of the message being sent. In this technique, ...

), pseudo random number generators,

transposition cipher In cryptography, a transposition cipher (also known as a permutation cipher) is a method of encryption which scrambles the positions of characters (''transposition'') without changing the characters themselves. Transposition ciphers reorder units ...

s, and

substitution cipher In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, t ...

s ''The Radio Hacker's Codebook'' is idiosyncratic revealing a personal quest by Sassoon to decrypt military signals on the radio spectrum. However he would have had no chance to decode modern encryption as described in the book. ''The Radio Hacker's Codebook'' broke ground in having a low price for a technical computing book being sold for £6.95 well below the typical £10+ price for computing books at the time.{{cite journal, last=Harwood, first=David, date=May 1986, title=Read Only, journal=ZX Computing Monthly, page=48, url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=ZXComputing/Issue8605/Pages/ZXComputing860500048.jpg It was published by

Duckworth Duckworth may refer to: * Duckworth (surname), people with the surname ''Duckworth'' * Duckworth (''DuckTales''), fictional butler from the television series ''DuckTales'' * Duckworth Books Duckworth Books, originally Gerald Duckworth and Co ...

and had 239 pages.

References

Cryptanalytic software