Secret History
The Story of Cryptology
By Craig P. Bauer
Published March 25th 2013 by Chapman and Hall/CRC – 620 pages
Description
Most available cryptology books primarily focus on either mathematics or history. Breaking this mold, Secret History: The Story of Cryptology gives a thorough yet accessible treatment of both the mathematics and history of cryptology. Requiring minimal mathematical prerequisites, the book presents the mathematics in sufficient detail and weaves the history throughout the chapters. In addition to the fascinating historical and political sides of cryptology, the author—a former Scholar-in-Residence at the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) Center for Cryptologic History—includes interesting instances of codes and ciphers in crime, literature, music, and art.
Following a mainly chronological development of concepts, the book focuses on classical cryptology in the first part. It covers Greek and Viking cryptography, the Vigenère cipher, the one-time pad, transposition ciphers, Jefferson’s cipher wheel, the Playfair cipher, ADFGX, matrix encryption, World War II cipher systems (including a detailed examination of Enigma), and many other classical methods introduced before World War II.
The second part of the book examines modern cryptology. The author looks at the work of Claude Shannon and the origin and current status of the NSA, including some of its Suite B algorithms such as elliptic curve cryptography and the Advanced Encryption Standard. He also details the controversy that surrounded the Data Encryption Standard and the early years of public key cryptography. The book not only provides the how-to of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange and RSA algorithm, but also covers many attacks on the latter. Additionally, it discusses Elgamal, digital signatures, PGP, and stream ciphers and explores future directions such as quantum cryptography and DNA computing.
With numerous real-world examples and extensive references, this book skillfully balances the historical aspects of cryptology with its mathematical details. It provides readers with a sound foundation in this dynamic field.
Contents
CLASSICAL CRYPTOLOGY
Ancient Roots
Caveman Crypto
Greek Cryptography
Viking Cryptography
Early Steganography
Monalphabetic Substitution Ciphers, or MASCs: Disguises for Messages
Caesar Cipher
Other MASC Systems
Edgar Allen Poe
Arthur Conan Doyle
Frequency Analysis
Biblical Cryptology
More Frequencies and Pattern Words
Vowel Recognition Algorithms
More MASCs
Cryptanalysis of a MASC
Unsolved Ciphers by a Killer and a Composer
Affine Ciphers
Morse Code and Huffman Coding
MASC Miscellanea
Nomenclators
Cryptanalysis of Nomenclators
Book Codes
Simple Progression to an Unbreakable Cipher
Vigenère Cipher
History of the Vigenère Cipher
Cryptanalysis of the Vigenère Cipher
Kryptos
Autokeys
Running Key Cipher and Its Cryptoanalysis
One-Time Pad or Vernam Cipher
Breaking the Unbreakable
Faking Randomness
Unsolved Cipher from 1915
OTPs and the SOE
History Rewritten!
Transposition Ciphers
Simple Rearrangements and Columnar Transposition
Cryptanalysis of Columnar Transposition
Historic Uses
Anagrams
Double Transposition
Word Transposition
Transposition Devices
Shakespeare, Jefferson, and JFK
Shakespeare vs. Bacon
Thomas Jefferson: President, Cryptographer
Cipher Wheel Cryptanalysis
Playfair Cipher
Playfair Cryptanalysis
World War I and Herbert O. Yardley
Zimmermann Telegram
ADFGX: A New Kind of Cipher
Cryptanalysis of ADFGX
Herbert O. Yardley
Peacetime Victory and a Tell-All Book
Case of the Seized Manuscript
Cashing in, Again
Herbert O. Yardley: Traitor
Censorship
Matrix Encryption
Levine and Hill
How Matrix Encryption Works
Levine’s Attacks
Bauer and Millward’s Attack
More Stories Left to Tell
World War II: The Enigma of Germany
Rise of the Machines
How Enigma Works
Calculating the Keyspace
Cryptanalysis Part 1. Recovering the Rotor Wirings
Cryptanalysis Part 2. Recovering the Daily Keys
After the Break
Alan Turing and Bletchley Park
Lorenz Cipher and Colossus
What If Enigma Had Never Been Broken?
Endings and New Beginnings
Cryptologic War against Japan
Forewarning of Pearl Harbor?
Friedman’s Team Assembles
Cryptanalysis of Red, a Japanese Diplomatic Cipher
Purple: How It Works
Purple Cryptanalysis
Practical Magic
Code Talkers
Code Talkers in Hollywood
Use of Languages as Oral Codes
MODERN CRYPTOLOGY
Claude Shannon
About Claude Shannon
Entropy
One More Time
Unicity Points
Dazed and Confused
National Security Agency
Origins of NSA
TEMPEST
Size and Budget
The Liberty and the Pueblo
Church Committee Investigations
Post Cold War Downsizing
Some Speculation
2000 and Beyond
Interviewing with NSA
BRUSA, UKUSA, and Echelon
Data Encryption Standard
How DES Works
Reactions to and Cryptanalysis of DES
EFF vs. DES
Second Chance
Interesting Feature
Modes of Encryption
Birth of Public Key Cryptography
Revolutionary Cryptologist
Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
RSA: Solution from MIT
Government Control of Cryptologic Research
RSA Patented, Alice and Bob Born Free
Attacking RSA
Eleven Non-Factoring Attacks
Factoring Challenge
Trial Division and the Sieve of Eratosthenes (ca. 284–204 BCE)
Fermat’s Factorization Method
Euler’s Factorization Method
Pollard’s p – 1 Algorithm
Dixon’s Algorithm
Pollard’s Number Field Sieve
Primality Testing and Complexity Theory
Some Facts about Primes
Fermat Test (1640)
Miller-Rabin Test
Deterministic Tests for Primality
Complexity Classes, P vs. NP, Probabilistic vs. Deterministic
Ralph Merkle’s Public Key Systems
Knapsack Encryption
ElGamal Encryption
Authenticity
Problem from World War II
Digital Signatures (and Some Attacks)
Hash Functions: Speeding Things Up
Digital Signature Algorithm
Pretty Good Privacy
Best of Both Worlds
Birth of PGP
In Zimmermann’s Own Words
Impact of PGP
Implementation Issues
Stream Ciphers
Congruential Generators
Linear Feedback Shift Registers
LFSR Attack
The Cellphone Stream Cipher A5/1
RC4
Suite B All-Stars
Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)
Personalities behind ECC
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
AES Attacks
Possible Futures
Quantum Cryptography: How It Works
Quantum Cryptography: Historical Background
DNA Computing
Index
References and Further Reading appear at the end of each chapter.
Author Bio
Craig P. Bauer is an associate professor of mathematics at York College of Pennsylvania and the editor-in-chief of Cryptologia. He was the 2011-2012 Scholar-in-Residence at the National Security Agency (NSA) Center for Cryptologic History, where he wrote several papers for NSA journals, gave a large number of lectures, and made substantial progress on a second book focused on unsolved codes and ciphers. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from North Carolina State University.
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Name: Secret History: The Story of Cryptology (Hardback) – Chapman and Hall/CRC
Description: By Craig P. Bauer. Most available cryptology books primarily focus on either mathematics or history. Breaking this mold, Secret History: The Story of Cryptology gives a thorough yet accessible treatment of both the mathematics and history of cryptology. Requiring minimal...
Categories: Cryptology, Combinatorics
