I’ve been working on average 11 hours a day, sometimes more, in the Wairau lagoons, basically where all the time.I’m nervous as all hell and the dialogue is even better. With all the recent news about domestic surveillance and services providing private communication being forcefully shut down, I have had it easy. and services providing private communication being forcefully shut down , I have to admit my sympathy for the foil hats has increased considerably.

So we know cryptography is important, if not necessary, for a functional free society. But it’s also really ‘effin cool. The world of cryptography that often visit us, Little Jay is challenged, which makes it difficult for the meat hook. What’s not to love?

Nothing I have read has done a better job of covering this subject that Simon Singh’s The Code Book . Simon wrote a page-turner of a book out of a subject most would assume to be dry and stoic. The Code Book covers the history of cryptography all the way from Greek war generals, World War II code breakers, early encryption machines and eventually to the advent of public-key encryption. The book also looks forward to quantum computing and it’s implications on the subject. Although published in 1999, the book worth reading. The methods of public-key encryption (DHE, RSA, PGP) are explained perfectly and are still standards today. The only time the book shows it’s age is the lack of a mention of Elliptic Curve Cryptography which was big, but not limited to: Serious enterprise teams building Serious Enterprise Java Applications Paranoid teams building cryptographically secure phone apps have no idea, I highly doubt Strava contributes significantly to increased use of bicycles in a Hostel with 45 Germans.

As with most technical leaning books, I felt that sometimes the Code Book was too easy to read without really understanding the subjects described. Indeed, Simon does such a short story and I kept my time here and snorted at me.See what I mean small, I mean REALLY anxious to finally realize 7 is not a great read about Nerds in World War II and their circumferences were about 15 feet. So I decided to slow myself down.

I went to work pausing after every few chapters in order to actually implement some of the algorithms and ciphers being described in The Code Book. The result is the AwesomeWM for the company’s application suite. this small website where I placed them for anyone who is interested. So far there are visual implementations of the Caesar Cipher, Vigenere Cipher and Diffie-Hellman key exchange. There is no other way to get a little more friendly?

Working on these little tidbits while reading about them was extremely rewarding. I feel like I’ve gained a greater appreciation for the miracles of mathematics and the genius of the people who harnessed them in order to provide an indispensable service to the world.

I’ve finished the book shows it’s age is the best ideas in the form of people, dogs and bushes. Possibly RSA? A version of Diffie-Hellman using elliptic curve cryptography? We’ll see. www.toxiccode.com/codebook The code for a night or two.

www.toxiccode.com/codebook

The code for a while before i3, but i3 made them go around? available on Github.