Diabolus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Diabolus is the German title of the first work by the American writer Dan Brown (English original title: Digital Fortress ) from 1998. The novel was published on February 21, 2005 in German translation.

The name of the eponymous program is derived from the Greek name of the devil , it is its Latinized form.

action

The US secret service NSA has a problem: Ensei Tankado, an ex- NSA cryptographer , has developed the Diabolus encryption program against which the NSA's supercomputer , TRANSLTR - has cracked every code so far and is therefore an indispensable tool for the Secret service is - supposedly powerless. To put the program to the test, the NSA's deputy chief, Trevor Strathmore, bypasses the computer's security filters and feeds it into the system. But Tankado has apparently died in Seville of a heart attack. Shortly before his death he had given a ring to a stranger.

Susan Fletcher, one of the most capable employees of the NSA, has now been summoned by Strathmore to the crypto department of the security agency to support him there with her knowledge, while her fiancé David Becker, a language teacher, is sent to Seville to have the Ring to come. Susan only now learns why Strathmore called her: The computer is stuck in a calculation loop. Strathmore and Susan are now doing everything in their power to restore the computer to its normal state, as it is slowly getting hot.

In a roundabout way, they finally find out that Diabolus is actually not an encryption program, but a computer worm that Tankado programmed to destroy the firewalls of the NSA database. Then not only would the data of the secret service become publicly known, but also secret material of the US government and the military would be freely accessible via the Internet. At the same time, David chases after the ring, in which Susan and Strathmore suspect an engraved code that can stop the worm while it is being pursued and threatened by a professional killer named Hulohot.

After many deaths and a mysterious game of confusion, it finally turns out that Strathmore himself intended to sell the code to decrypt the virus to a computer company, but only after he had provided the program with a back door that would give the NSA unrestricted access to all data that would have been encrypted with this code. The computer company would have sold the program, the NSA would have shown everyone how powerless they were now, while in truth they could read all the emails. It was also Strathmore who had Tankado killed and the killer turned on David for falling in love with Susan himself. But his plan is revealed and he goes under with the exploding TRANSLTR. But Susan manages to escape from the flames and, together with other cryptologists, finds the difficult password to deactivate the worm. In this way, it protects the database at the last second from tons of hackers who are already waiting to acquire the data on the mega hard drive. Then she can finally make her dream come true and go on vacation with David.

The plot runs in two threads: on the one hand the cryptographic department and on the other hand Seville, where Susan Fletcher's fiancé David Becker is rushed by the other side in search of the code.

Basic theme

The basic theme of Diabolus is the question of data security and thus that of the Latin motto of Ensei Tankado Quis custodiet ipsos custodes : "Who is watching the guards?"

There are two sides, whose views meet:

  • Strathmore, NSA, Susan: The ends justify the means. The NSA, through its duty to protect the state, is empowered to read every message sent and to decrypt encrypted messages. The loss of privacy is excused by the advantage of preventing criminal activity. Commander Strathmore fights for the security of the country, but has no qualms about deceiving people for this goal.
  • Tankado, EFF , Greg: Human privacy should remain intact. The interception and decryption of messages, like listening to phone calls, should only be possible by court order. A government that can read all the news can cut down any opposition. The TRANSLTR, which makes the decryption of every message possible, is the beginning of the surveillance state, especially since Strathmore keeps the existence of this computer secret. Since the NSA acts without any supervision, it has the potential to act arbitrarily.

Artistic freedom

Diabolus is used for various errors and inaccuracies, etc. a. his descriptions of cryptological procedures and conditions.

  • In Diabolus , computers execute all data as program code, even if the data is only to be displayed or searched. This allows TRANSLTR to run the virus when it tries to decrypt Diabolus, and Susan can use her tracer to find out e-mail addresses that have been hidden by a remailer . An operating system , on the other hand, usually ensures that data is only executed as code when the user or administrator intends to do so.
  • Computers on which valuable data are stored or processed are always separated from computers on which suspicious program code is analyzed or executed. Data can only be exchanged between the two systems on physical data carriers (e.g. an external hard drive) and after a thorough check. Dan Brown ignores the air gap here , a basic security measure in computer networks. However, this also happens in major feature films, such as Skyfall .
  • The author explains that the effort involved in a brute force attack , i.e. trying out all possible keys, increases linearly with increasing key length . H. it takes twice as long to crack a 128-bit key as for 64-bit encryption. In fact, however, the effort increases exponentially , i.e. H. a 65-bit key already takes twice as long as a 64-bit key (because 64 bits = 2 64 possible keys, 65 bits = 2 65 = 2 x 2 64 possible keys). If you lengthen a key by 64 bits, the time required to try out all possible keys increases in the same ratio of one millisecond to the age of the universe.
  • The advantage of the public key procedure , which Brown “explains” at the beginning, is the asymmetry of the keys. Private key means that only one party owns it. It is encrypted with the public key, which everyone can have, since the encrypted text cannot be decrypted again with the public key. Brown confuses “private” with “secret”, and explains that both encryption and decryption take place with the private key.
  • Codes that cannot be decrypted are nothing special and have existed for a long time, for example the so-called one-time pad . A necessary criterion for such a code, however, is the use of a key that is at least as long as the plain text to be encrypted.
  • Dan Brown confuses the compressed file format ZIP , the encryption program PGP and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange process with encryption processes.
  • He mentions the weight of the Enigma - the Nazis' twelve-ton encryption beast - at twelve tons. However, she weighed just 12 kilograms. Brown is referring here more to the Allied decryption machines, such as the so-called " Turing bomb ".
  • The key length of 64 bits in the book is also equated with a password of 64 characters in length. The key length is independent of the password, since passwords of any length can be converted into keys with a defined length using a hash process (such as SHA ) - 128, 192 or 256 bits are common nowadays.
  • In the course of the story it is claimed that the Mark I , developed in the USA in 1944, was the world's first (digital) computer. But it was built in 1941 with the Zuse Z3 by Konrad Zuse and Helmut Schreyer .
  • The chase on the stairs in the tower of Giralda of Seville Cathedral can not take place as follows: In this building, there are no stairs to the top, only ramps.
  • It is claimed that prostitution is banned in Spain . That is by no means the case. There are only local restrictions on street prostitution.
  • The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was called Little Boy , not Big Boy. "Big Boy" , however, was a well-known steam locomotive developed in the 1940s.
  • In the end, it is claimed that the Fat Man atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki was made of uranium 238 U. On the one hand, this contradicts historical events - the fissile mass consisted of delta-phase plutonium alloy ( predominantly 239 Pu, as well as a very small amount of gallium ) - and on the other hand, this is technically nonsensical, since 238 U is not fissile and therefore not can be used for nuclear reactions. In fact, 238 U was used as a neutron reflector in the Fat Man construction .

media

literature

Audio book

Secondary literature

  • Oliver Mittelbach: Dan Brown's thriller scenes as a travel destination (bookworms on the go) , Books & Friends, 2006, ISBN 978-3-9809408-4-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Juvenal Satiren VI, 347 f.
  2. ^ Dan Brown: Diabolus / Digital Fortress (book review by the cryptologist Prof. Dr. Klaus Pommerening). Retrieved January 5, 2011 .
  3. ^ Dan Brown: Diabolus . Bastei Entertainment , 2013, p. 524 ( p. 29 in Google book search).
  4. ^ Dan Brown: Diabolus . Bastei Entertainment , 2013, p. 524 ( p. 37 in Google Book search).
  5. ^ Dan Brown: Diabolus . Bastei Entertainment , 2013, p. 524 ( p. 354 in Google Book Search).
  6. ^ Dan Brown: Diabolus . Bastei Entertainment , 2013, p. 524 ( p. 108 in Google Book search).
  7. ^ Dan Brown: Diabolus . Bastei Entertainment , 2013, p. 524 ( p. 109 in Google Book search).
  8. ^ Dan Brown: Diabolus . Bastei Entertainment , 2013, p. 524 ( p. 361 in Google Book Search).
  9. ^ Dan Brown: Diabolus . Bastei Entertainment , 2013, p. 524 ( p. 367 in Google Book Search).