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January 2001
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Jamming | Book review : The Code Book | News Items
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| What a nice idea it would be to order this book using the search form located at the bottom of this page! |
On 31st August 1999, a Tuesday, the Daily Mail printed an interesting article entitled "Secrets of the Codebreakers" by Simon Singh. A picture of the inside of the second world war Bletchley Park facility was included. At the end of the piece a challenge was made inviting the reader to solve the 'special' Daily Mail cipher challenge and win one hundred pounds. (I solved the challenge correctly in just 15 minutes, sent it off and heard no more).
The article ended with the words 'An extract abridged by Trevor Grove from the Code Book..............'
Opening the Code Book the introduction begins "For thousands of years kings, queens and generals have relied on efficient communication in order to govern their countries and command their armies. At the same time, they have all been aware of the consequences of their messages falling into the wrong hands, revealing precious secrets to rival nations and betraying vital information to opposing forces.
It was the threat of enemy interception motivated the development of codes and ciphers: techniques for disguising a message so that only the intended recipient can read it."
Those few lines accurately sum up the necessity of codes and ciphers and by interpreting the unwritten message there, specifically states the requirement for the skills of the cryptoanalyst and the huge, expensive secret industries that now exist to suck in, or disseminate secret messages.
Simon Singh, educated at Imperial College and Cambridge, has researched his subject well, taking the reader from the early substitution and transposition ciphers to the Playfair system, Zimmerman telegram and other systems including the one-time Pad to the current Public Key Cryptography. Techniques used on the recent test on the GCHQ web page are also covered.
As if that is not complex enough for the reader, Singh then looks into the suggestion of Quantum Cryptography which he uses the eighteenth century experiment of physicist Thomas Young (The Undulating Theory of Light) involving Young's' Slits and interferometry to lead to an effective and interesting explanation of the basis of Quantum Cryptography, the 'Superposition of States.'
The book is enjoyable to read and perplexes the brain, although Singh's own mathematical skills do seem a little unnecessary at times. It has a very different approach to the usual 'stated' works on the subject and ends with ten mystery ciphers of varying complexity, each utilising a different method.
The first to break those encrypted messages stands to win ten thousand pounds.
The last encrypted puzzle appears to be in PGP and the reviewer was not surprised that Singh states that if all the messages are not broken by 2010 he will choose the candidate who has, in his opinion, done well enough to deserve the prize.
| Nevertheless, the all 10 ciphers were broken by a Swedish team in mid-October 2000. |
The Code Book is not light reading nor is it to be considered a text book. It is a particular reference work that has, in the style that it is written, surpassed all others on the same subject. It is to be recommended to any person who has an interest in codes, ciphers and their mechanisms.
A television series, 'The Science of Secrecy', broadcast on BBC2 encompasses the content of the book into an interesting visual experience.
Incidentally, the coded message in the Daily Mail read:
"In the nineteenth century young lovers used codes and ciphers to send each other secret messages parents could sometimes forbid their daughters to send love letters and they could therefore send a coded message to the newspaper which would print it in a special column known as an agony column"
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Jamming | Book review : The Code Book | News Items
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