Matt Daubneys Blog

In a fit of overwhelming generosity, popey lent me a couple of books, The Code Book by Simon Singh and a python book, which is downstairs so I don’t have the title to hand. Ignoring the python book for the moment, I’ll concentrate on The Code Book.

The Code Book is an overview of the history of codes, ciphers and code cracking. Encryption in all its forms is incredibly interesting to me, simply because some of the methods involved are incredibly clever and very subtle. The book goes through the evolution of codemakers and codebreakers from it’s very beginnings  with Ceasers’ cipher through to some predictions on quantum computing and the effects of this.

The book starts with the story of Mary Queen of Scots. She was put on trial for Treason, but her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, would only convict and execute her if it could be proven without doubt. This story of how code-breaking had been a life or death situation is continued through out the book. These stories in themselves are intriguing for the huge effect codes and code-breaking have had in our history. The constant creation of new codes and the subsequent breaking of them changed various events in our history.

The author leads us through history, story by story, cipher by cipher, talking about various famous cryptogrophers including Turing, Vignere, Zimmerman and many others.

The book is very easy to read and incredibly insightful. It’s certainly made me a bit more paranoid about security of my various machines!

Thanks again to Popey for lending me this book, and also allowing me to pass it on if anybody else would like to delve through it! Just drop me an email and let me know you’re interested