Secret messages

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Secret messages. The Art of Encryption from Antiquity to the Times of the Internet (English original title "The Code Book. The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography" ) is a popular science book published in September 1999 by Simon Singh at Fourth Estate in London , that illustrates the history of cryptology using historical events. In 2000 the German-language edition (translator: Klaus Fritz ) was published by Carl Hanser in Munich. The book was honored with the Corine 2001 . It consists of eight chapters, an appendix and a glossary.

content

  • 1. The secret writing of Maria Stuart
Francis Walsingham founds the English secret service . Maria Stuart's nomenclature and the story of her fateful involvement in the Babington plot serve as an introduction to the history of cryptography for the author . Two figures summarize some basic terms - the key for encryption / decryption of the plain text / ciphertext . It also deals with the difference between encryption and hiding, and with encryption, it is about transposition and substitution . When substituting, Simon Singh differentiates between ciphering and coding (replace word).
  • 2. Le Chiffre indéchiffrable
Charles Babbage and a few years later Friedrich Kasiski break the Vigenère encryption . Étienne Bazeries deciphers the “Great Cipher” of the Rossignols and thus helps identify the man with the iron mask . The Beale cipher , which has remained unbroken to this day , is also mentioned.
The Enigma
  • 3. The mechanization of encryption
Georges Painvin cracks ADFGVX radio messages. In Room 40 is Zimmermann Telegram decrypted. Arthur Scherbius develops the Enigma .
  • 4. The decryption of the Enigma
The pioneering work of the mathematician Marian Rejewski at Biuro Szyfrów enables Alan Turing's group in Bletchley Park to decipher the Enigma radio messages.
  • 5. The language barrier
The topic of the chapter is natural languages, such as the use of the Navajo code in World War II, but also the deciphering of hieroglyphs by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion or of Linear B by Michael Ventris , John Chadwick and Alice Kober .
  • 6. Alice and Bob go public
The chapter describes the beginnings of asymmetric cryptography : The invention of the RSA cryptosystem and the Diffie-Hellman-Merkle key exchange by scientists and the parallel discoveries at GCHQ by James H. Ellis , Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson, which were initially kept secret .
The book closes with explanations on quantum cryptography by David Deutsch and Charles Bennett .

Reviews

The book was reviewed on March 17, 2000 by Bernd Graff in the " Süddeutsche Zeitung " and on August 17, 2000 by Joachim Laukenmann in " Zeit ".

Used edition

  • Simon Singh: Secret Messages. The art of encryption from ancient times to the Internet. Translated from the English by Klaus Fritz. With numerous black and white illustrations. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2012 (11th edition), ISBN 978-3-42333071-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 27 and p. 48
  2. ↑ perlentaucher.de