Customer Reviews

Codes, Ciphers, Secrets and Cryptic Communication: Making and Breaking Secret Messages from Hieroglyphs to the Internet

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While this book covers a wide range of topics, I found it to be shaky on some topics. In particular, modern developments such as quantum cryptography, electronic warfare terms (SIGINT, ELINT, and especially RADINT--book description is wrong). Perhaps the author's strength is in historical cryptography, and he has not researched or does not understand modern developments. My overall impression is that the book covers an enormous range of topics, but in a shallow way. Cryptanalysis is not discussed in any depth, unlike other code/cipher books I've read.

This book is a history of codes, ciphers and secret forms of communication from ancient times until the present. It is the most complete and the most current of any such books I have ever found.

Complete: I have read many books that talk about Rommel's army reading the codes sent by the American military attache in Cairo. But I didn't know that this was in the 'Black' code, and that the capture of the German radio outpost at Tel-el-Eisa revealed the fact that the Black code had been broken and that then the Allies began using the Black code with false information.

Current: The U.S. Navy used a cipher machine during WW II called the ECM Mark II. Information on this machine was declassified in 1996 (60 years after the machine was adopted), and that information is included here.

An interesting section of the book is on Unsolved Scripts. Here are some writing samples discovered by archaeologists that remain unsolved.

This book does not go into modern computer based codes. These have gotten so complex that you need a book on them by themselves, as well as a degree in mathematics.