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Steven Levy

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age Paperback – January 15, 2002

by Steven Levy (Author)

4.6 185 ratings

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If you've ever made a secure purchase with your credit card over the Internet, then you have seen cryptography, or "crypto", in action. From Stephen Levy—the author who made "hackers" a household word—comes this account of a revolution that is already affecting every citizen in the twenty-first century. Crypto tells the inside story of how a group of "crypto rebels"—nerds and visionaries turned freedom fighters—teamed up with corporate interests to beat Big Brother and ensure our privacy on the Internet. Levy's history of one of the most controversial and important topics of the digital age reads like the best futuristic fiction.

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date

January 15, 2002
Dimensions

7.96 x 5.4 x 0.84 inches
ISBN-10

0140244328
ISBN-13

978-0140244328
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Gripping and illuminating." —The Wall Street Journal

"A great David-and-Goliath story—humble hackers hoodwink sinister spooks." —Time

About the Author

Steven Levy is the author of Hackers, which has been in print for more than fifteen years, as well as Insanely Great: The Life & Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything. He is also Newsweek's chief technology writer and has been a contributing writer to Wired since its inception. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Publishing Group; First Edition (January 15, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140244328
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140244328
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.96 x 5.4 x 0.84 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #831,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #221 in Computing Industry History
- #233 in Web Encryption
- #575 in Computer Hacking

Customer Reviews:
4.6 185 ratings

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Steven Levy

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Levy is editor at large at Wired. Previous positions include editor in chief at Backchannel; and chief technology writer and a senior editor for Newsweek. In early 2020, his book "Facebook: The Inside Story" will appear, the product of over three years studying the company, which granted unprecedented access to its employees and executives. Levy has written previous seven books and has had articles published in Harper's, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Premiere, and Rolling Stone. Steven has won several awards during his 30+ years of writing about technology, including Hackers, which PC Magazine named the best Sci-Tech book written in the last twenty years and, Crypto, which won the grand eBook prize at the 2001 Frankfurt Book festival. "In the Plex," the definitive book on Google, was named the Best Business Book of 2011 on both Amazon and Audible.

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SLD12DAY

An engaging and important read, even after nearly 20 years

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 10, 2018

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I bought this book based on the recommendation of the professor who teaches my cyber security class, and since it is out of print, I took a chance and got a used one. The condition of the book is far better than I anticipated and the seller shipped it super fast.

As for the content, it is interesting and engaging and Mr. Levy has done a great job at conveying the history and importance of cryptography and how it relates to cyber security on a level that is neither overly technical nor dumbed down. While the book was originally published nearly two decades ago, the information is still relevant today. He has written several other books including The Unicorn’s Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius, another I very much enjoyed.

Whether or not you are working in the cyber security field, I feel like this is an important book for everyone to read, especially with all the rumblings of Russian hackers, data breeches on credit cards and social media accounts and all the other hacking and phreaking that’s going on right under our noses. Knowledge is power, and it is our best defense against those who seek to hurt us. This book will help you find your ammunition.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Donald A. Tevault

Important history

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 20, 2021

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This story about the development of computer cryptography is both fascinating and important. The book is very well-written, and very easy to read. Its importance lies in the fact that it explains the machinations of government agencies to prevent the masses from using strong cryptography, and how the good guys in the software industry were able to overcome the obstacles. So, if you need a good read, go ahead and grab a copy.

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Marcelo P. Lima

Excellent short history on the human side of pub. key crypto

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 30, 2001

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This easy-to-ready short history by writer Steven Levy, who has written numerous articles for Wired, is a very well-researched volume on the human side of public-key cryptography.
Levy has interviewed all of the major players: Diffie, Adleman, Chaum, Zimmerman, and others; he's done nearly a decade of research on the subject, and monitored the sci.crypt.* newsgroups. Clearly, this is an authoritative account of the short 30-year history of public key.
The main theme of the book is how the NSA tried to stifle new developments by the researchers, placing secrecy orders and classifying their patents and papers. Throughout the book, as Levy draws out the characters, it's the crypto community vs. the government, until ultimately the cypherpunks win out.
This book doesn't contain a single diagram; no photos, and no equations at all. So if you're looking for a technical introduction to crypto, look elsewhere; this is purely an informally-written account on the people behind the scenes.
Five stars, for what it is; sure, Levy writes with magazine-style prose, but this fits the high-level view he takes on the subject. Most importantly, this volume was exhaustively researched and has the collaboration of all of the key players, which lends Levy's account great credibility.

13 people found this helpful

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Paul Leskinen

and is an excellent summary of how public key cryptography came into being

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 13, 2014

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This book held my interest from start to finish, and is an excellent summary of how public key cryptography came into being, as well as a good history of cryptography in the public sector. Steven Levy writes in a style that is very easy to read. I found the history of the battle between government (e.g. the NSA) and private encryption technology to be quite interesting. I would recommend this book to those interested in the field of cryptography as a good history of the private development of crypto. It's not overly technical, although it does discuss some basics of algorithms and how they developed over time.

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John Hanley

Pretty Good Presentation :-)

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 13, 2003

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I enjoyed reading this book; Mr. Levy has an engaging and readable style. One can always wish for more, but in my case, I would have liked a chapter about crypto activities in other countries besides the U.S. and Great Britain. For example, what do we know, if anything about what the Soviet Union or, say, Israel was doing in this field over the years. As example, do we have evidence that U.S. developments were actually put to use by other countries. Otherwise, for me, now on to read "Hackers"!

One person found this helpful

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Neil Bacon

Interesting Book on One of the Most Important Discoveries of Our Time

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 12, 2015

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Fascinating book. Recommended for anyone who is interested in how great ideas get to market and how they can be smothered in their crib by government and, frankly, just bad management decisions. Some of the descriptions of encryption techniques get a bit heavy, but a) I was interested in that part too and b) if that is not your thing, jump ahead.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

I'll save the complete review for goodreads, but as someone who is semi-interested in cryptography this is a fun read. The lengths that the NSA went to in order to quash attempts at building solid encryption are astounding. This book reads like a spy novel... albeit one with rather pasty and doughy spies.

The book was in perfect condition and arrived quickly.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

I gifted this to my boyfriend and he really likes it. Recommended for someone who is also studying cryptography.

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Jeremy Walton

Tales from the crypt

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 8, 2018

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I've enjoyed Levy's other books on technology (beginning, a long time ago, with his classic Hackers) so was looking forward to reading his account of the development of modern cryptography. More specifically, the period he covers is from the mid-70s - when Diffie and Hellman solved the problem of distributing cryptographic keys, which immediately led to the development of public key cryptography - to the end of the 20th century, when the Internet was exploding in popularity and usage.

He stops there because this book was written in 2000, but it's still an important read because of the way it describes the technical developments in cryptography and - more compellingly - the tension between researchers in this field, government agencies and commercial companies. Each of these communities had a specific and - usually - contentious view of the priorities associated with cryptography and privacy. The battle between them came to the fore in the debate over the clipper chip: an encryption device developed by the National Security Agency for voice and data messages which included a back-door to allow law enforcement to decode transmissions. Clipper was defunct less than three years after its introduction, partly because the government lost the debate over privacy, but mostly because of the widespread use of independently-developed public key cryptography.

The issues discussed in this book have only become more important with the further extension of the Internet and our reliance on it in every day use (the book describes the initial attempts to introduce digital cash, for example), and society's evolving ideas about the prices we're willing to pay for privacy. Recommended.

la Plume de ma Tante

If you want the inside story on the NSA and GCHQ you must read this book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 8, 2014

Verified Purchase

A fascinating and incredibly detailed examination of the development of public key encryption by private individuals and their continuing battles with the US Government and the bureaucratic empire that the NSA had become. This account places Edward Snowden as only the latest of many people who have suffered for revealing the lack of clothes these emperors wear. Not difficult to read, written by a journalist rather than a computer geek, this is a splendid account of a struggle that is not over yet.

2 people found this helpful

Federico Ruiz

Un libro extremadamente interesante, entrega irreprochable

Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on August 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

Este libro presenta de modo ameno la evolución de la criptografía desde finales de la segunda guerra mundial hasta nuestros días.
Es muy útil para entender una evolución que ha desembocado en Blockchain, por ejemplo
Se lle como una novela y contiene las referencias necesarias para profundizar.

El libro aparentemente no se se publica pero lo adquirí de uno de los vendedores de Amamzon, muy buen estado, entrega rápida y sin problemas

One person found this helpful

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Maarten van Emden

Excellent.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 24, 2017

Verified Purchase

Prompt delivery, beautiful copy.

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