Digital Fortress: A Thriller (Mass Market Paperback)

by Dan Brown (Author) "They were in the Smoky Mountains at their favorite bed-and-breakfast..." (more)
Key Phrases: unbreakable algorithm, main databank, aux power, Digital Fortress, David Becker, Ensei Tankado (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
In most thrillers, "hardware" consists of big guns, airplanes, military vehicles, and weapons that make things explode. Dan Brown has written a thriller for those of us who like our hardware with disc drives and who rate our heroes by big brainpower rather than big firepower. It's an Internet user's spy novel where the good guys and bad guys struggle over secrets somewhat more intellectual than just where the secret formula is hidden--they have to gain understanding of what the secret formula actually is.

In this case, the secret formula is a new means of encryption, capable of changing the balance of international power. Part of the fun is that the book takes the reader along into an understanding of encryption technologies. You'll find yourself better understanding the political battles over such real-life technologies as the Clipper Chip and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software even though the book looks at the issues through the eyes of fiction.

Although there's enough globehopping in this book for James Bond, the real battleground is cyberspace, because that's where the "bomb" (or rather, the new encryption algorithm) will explode. Yes, there are a few flaws in the plot if you look too closely, but the cleverness and the sheer fun of it all more than make up for them. There are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and a lot of high, gee-whiz-level information about encryption, code breaking, and the role they play in international politics. Set aside the whole afternoon and evening for it and have finger food on hand for supper--you may want to read this one straight through. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
The National Security Agency (NSA) is one setting for this exciting thriller; the other is Seville, where on page 1 the protagonist, lately dismissed from NSA, drops dead of a supposed heart attack. Though dead, he enjoys a dramaturgical afterlife in the form of his computer program. Digital Fortress creates unbreakable codes, which could render useless NSA's code-cracking supercomputer called TRANSLTR, but the deceased programmer slyly embossed a decryption key on a ring he wore. Pursuit of this ring is the engine of the plot. NSA cryptology boss Trevor Strathmore dispatches linguist Dave Becker to recover the ring, while he and Becker's lover, senior code-cracker Susan Fletcher, ponder the vulnerability of TRANSLTR. In Seville, over-the-top chase scenes abound; meanwhile, the critical events unfold at NSA. In a crescendo of murder, infernos, and explosions, it emerges that Strathmore has as agenda that goes beyond breaching Digital Fortress, and Brown's skill at hinting and concealing Strathmore's deceit will rivet cyber-minded readers. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks; Second Edition, Revised Edition edition (December 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312995423
• ISBN-13: 978-0312995423
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (956 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #121,684 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Painful like an icicle jabbed thru the eye & into the brain, November 11, 2004

By	Rimesh Patel (Washington D.C.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wow, where to begin. This is the second Dan Brown book I've read and I'm guessing it'll likely be the last. To begin, if you plan on reading this book, forget suspending your disbelief, rather tie up your disbelief, take it out back and shoot it lest it resurface while you're reading the book.

Yes, this book contains an impressive amount of plot holes, factual errors, non-existent technology, etc. The NSA (which is in fact bigger than the CIA and the FBI) is portrayed as an organization with no more than perhaps 20 employees, none of whom come in on weekends. Employees with 170 IQs who act as if they had a 70 IQ. 12 gauge printer cable? The NSA has full-time employees that work as translators -- they don't hire temp college professors to read Chinese/Japanese. Programmers/mathematicians DO NOT MAKE an exorbitant amount of money working for the NSA -- they are still subject to the federal payscale. X-eleven, not 'X11'? Brute force code-breaking as the primary decryption method????? VSLI, not VLSI??? Tracer programs which don't have to be executed, but act on their own? Ugh.

I can overlook these things if they appeared in a well written, taut storyline. In his defense, Dan Brown doesn't include a preface to this book espousing the accuracy of the books' general facts as he does in the prefaces for Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. So you have to take it as FICTION and not non-fiction. He does claim to have corresponded with former NSA employees during his research for this book. Having a bit of experience in the industry, I would say that either Dan Brown had no such correspondences with former NSA employees, they fed him misinformation deliberately, or Dan Brown was informed the basis of his entire book was nonsensical by these former employees, so he decided to throw all their suggestions in the trash and continued to write this book anyhow.

Regardless, the ultimate downfall of this book is BAD WRITING. The characters are flat and annoying. Their actions are contradictory to their personalities -- for no other purpose than to move the 'plot' along. I think Dan Brown has a Word-a-Day calendar and he uses that new vocabulary word several times in the 10-15 pages of writing he produces that day. Words such as 'andalusian' are used several times in a 3 'chapter' span and then never again surface throughout the book.

Most frustratingly, Dan Brown apparently never learned similes are functional and get the point across, but should not be used often as they can be extremely annoying and counterproductive to getting a point across. Towards the end of the book all these sentences are seriously used in less than 2 full pages:
- "The commander rose through the trap door LIKE Lazarus back from the dead."
- "Freon was flowing downward through the smoldering TRANSLTR LIKE oxygenated blood."
- "Susan was standing before him, damp and tousled, in his blazer. She looked LIKE a freshman coed who'd been caught in the rain. He felt LIKE the senior who'd lent her his varsity sweater." [nice double simile, huh?]
- "Her gaze was LIKE ice -- the softness was gone. Susan Fletcher stood rigid LIKE an immovable statue." [another one] "The puddle of blood beneath Hale's body had spread across the carpet LIKE an oil spill."

Believe it or not, there are more in this 2 page space, but I'll stop here. Yes, the writing is THAT groan-inducingly bad. These two classics in the book make me laugh every time I think of them -- "Like in a cheap hollywood movie, the lights went out in the bathroom just as she heard the scream," and "any more interesting than last night and I'll never walk again."

Ultimately, I did finish the book -- one reason I gave it 2 stars instead of one. A small reason was because I hate leaving a book half read, but I finished it more so to see how much more ludicrous the book would become. There's a good premise in the book, but a better writer was needed to coax it out. Dan Brown is not that writer.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Technological BS, June 14, 2005

By	Eric B. Wolf "GIS Geek" (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I sure hope that the technological errors in Digital Fortress are not a reflection of Dan Brown's research abilities. Some of the errors were so glaring that I wanted to throw the book out the window. But I'm used to seeing some problems in movies, so I thought I'd go along for the ride. But here are some of the biggest blunders:

1. The NSA commander wants to patch some encryption code with a backdoor and replace the version on the web with his own. This won't work because no one in security trusts code that doesn't match a hash from the original author. This is how code is authenticated. Is standard practice. His patch would cause the hash to fail. Also, everyone else who really wanted the encryption code already downloaded the original version - just like the commander did. They aren't going to get a new one. What BS!

2. A $2B computer designed to crack codes would have separated code and data spaces in memory. It would be impossible for an encrypted communication to infect the host with a "virus" or "worm" because the communication would in data space. Just because Microsoft doesn't use really secure systems architecture doesn't mean the NSA wouldn't! More BS!

3. No one hand-solders CPUs even if they are in a $2B computer. And expecially if there are 3 million of them! Brown obviously connects hand-soldering with extreme technical knowhow because he later has the head computer geek hand-soldering a chip inside a running mainframe. Can you say BS!

4. When a computer overheats, the temperature tolerance of the CPU may be exceeded by a few degrees, especially in highly sensitive, high-performance equipment. Silion, by it's nature, changes in resistance dramatically when the temperature exceeds operational parameters. There's no way a "virus" or a "worm" could cause anything other than a system shutdown due to temperature variations - and a really sensitive system would automatically shutdown when the temperate range was exceeded by a few degrees. There's no way in heck the system would continue to run until it reached a temperature where the silicon would explode! Come on - I thought Brown did at least some research.

If anything, these errors make me thing that Lewis Perdue actually did Brown's research for Da Vinci Code - but not willingly...

47 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Get "The Minerva Virus" Instead, February 6, 2006

By	Banas (Diamond Bar, CA) - See all my reviews

If you are looking for a GOOD sotry about computer technologies that doesn't fall off a cliff, then "Digital Fortress" is not what you want to read.

This book is a major let-down. Good beginning that just deteriorates into garbage.

I did, however, just finish a GREAT book that is a true New Age Cyber-Terror Tale. Much more enjoyable, I suggest checking out "The Minerva Virus" before you waste your time with this one.