New code book and cyrpto challenge

Cryptologia, Apr 2000 by Kruh, Louis

Singh, Simon. The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy From Mary, Queen of Scots To Quantum Cryptography. Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York NY 10036 USA. 1999, 402 pp. $24.95.

Author of the widely acclaimed Fermat's Enigma, Singh applies a storyteller's sense of drama with a scientist's (Ph.D in physics) appreciation for clear mathematical descriptions to the technology of codes and codebreaking. His main objectives are to review the evolution of codes, the constant attack on them by codebreakers and show that when a weakness is exposed, the code becomes extinct or evolves into a new, stronger system. Another objective is to show how cryptology has become more important than ever before and how "the public's growing demand for stronger) cryptography conflicts with the needs of law enforcement and national security."

Singh covers the history of cryptology in eight chapters, ten appendices and also poses a $15,000 Cipher Challenge. His technique is to focus on a few personalities and events while also covering other highlights and notables. The featured events and people by chapter are:

1-Arab cryptanalysts and the cipher of Mary, (queen of Scots; 2-Le Chiff`re Indechriffrable - Blaise de Vigenere, Charles Babbage, and the Beale Cipher; 3-The Zimmermann telegram, the mechanization of secrecy, Joseph Mauborgne and the random key, and the Enigma cipher machine; 4-Cracking the Enigma Marian Rejewski, Bletchley Park, and Alan Turing; 5-The Language Barrier Navajo Code Talkers, The Rosetta Stone, and Linear B; 6-Alice and Bob Go Public - Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, public-key cryptography, RSA, GCHQ, James Ellis, Clifford Cocks, and Malcolm Williamson; 7-Pretty Good Privacy Phil Zimmermann; 8-A Quantum Leap into the Future - quantum cryptography, Thomas Young, David Deutsch, Stephen Wiesner, Charles Bennett, and Gilles Brassard.

Singh also mentions Herbert Yardley's American Black Chamber but errs thrice by writing, President Herbert Hoover "disbanded the Black Chamber, and his Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, declared that `Gentlemen should not read each other's mail'." Error l, Stimson, not Hoover, closed the Black Chamber by withdrawing State Department funding; Error 2, the correct quote is "Gentlemen `do' not read . " and Error 3 is that the quotation was his biographer's (McGeorge Bundy) version of Stimson's recollections at age 80, of events that occurred 20 years earlier.

Ten appendices include Singh's views on The So-called Bible Code, description of the Playfair Cipher, The ADFGVX Cipher, The weaknesses of Recycling a One-time Pad, ancient scripts still awaiting solution, The Mathematics of RSA, and other topics.

Singh's cipher challenge consists of ten separate stages starting with a monoalphabetic cipher and progresses in difficulty "through the history of cryptography . . . the second stage contains a ciphertext that has been encrypted using one of the earliest ciphers, and the tenth stage contains one of the most modern forms of cipher." If the prize is not collected by 1 October 2000, $1,500 goes to whoever has made the most progress and the ultimate winning entry must be received by 1 January 2010. Progress will be tracked on The Code Book website.

For "Further Reading" Singh suggests four books for the general reader and provides 15 Internet sites related to codes and ciphers. He also lists 37 other books, distributed among the eight chapters, presumably for further reference on the topics covered therein. Unfortunately, it is not a satisfactory substitute for footnotes, which are lacking.

Despite the noted shortcomings, Singh offers an interesting, illustrated and up-to-date history of cryptology. One example is the story of how three talented GCHQ cryptographers invented Public-Key Cryptography before Diffie, Hellman et al.