2008-09-13

The Code Book by Simon Singh (2003)

This is a very nice introduction to cryptology for a "teen" version of the book, offering peeks into the various historical events affected by code making and breaking. Stories of Greek stenography, Mary Queen of the Scots, Enigma (and successful code breaking efforts by Polish and English scientists/military), Navajo "wind" talkers, discovery of the public-private key based RSA algorithm (and it's implementation in PGP and the political wrangling around it) offer a wide background and lots of historical lessons. In addition, the book also presents basic introduction to various ciphers and cipher breaking techniques, like frequency analysis.

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