Having recently finished Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson — a book about codebreaking, Nazi gold, data havens, Unix, revolution and homicidal lawyers — I’ve developed a passing interest in cryptography. For example, there’s Solitaire, a system mentioned in the novel that allows one to encrypt then decrypt a message using nothing more complex than a deck of cards. (Though, truth be told, I’d also need a pencil, a stack a paper and a whole lotta time.)
The Enigma machine figures heavily into the book. The German military used it during World War II to encode secret messages. The Allies broke it pretty early on. In fact, one of the characters in Cryptonomicon is charged with the task of thinking up blunders for the Allied forces to make so it would look as if they hadn’t broken the code. Also, it inspired a movie.
So I’m intrigued by the BoingBoing post pointing out an Enigma machine for sale on eBay. Any of you with a spare $13,480 are welcome to make a bid on my behalf.
Comments
Lots of very cool cryptography stuff out there. I liked Cryptonomicon a lot, myself. My favorite book on cryptography on my shelf is Code Breaking by Rudolf Kippenhahn. It's translated from German, which is a feat in itself given all the alphabetic and language-centric craziness that goes into writing a book on this subject. There's a fair bit of math in there, but also a LOT of history and cool anecdotal information, told from a non-American perspective which is important in getting the straight story on most of the code breaking efforts of WWII. Readable and clear, without being too watered-down.
For other suggestions, you could try wikipedia which has a page on the subject.
When you're ready to be humbled (as in, "pummeled into a little ball and spat upon" kind of humbled), you can try this site which provides a good list of some historical unsolved crypto problems. Many of them have been around long enough that at least half the stuff written about them has to do with whether they're red herrings or real crypto, which can be interesting in itself.
Once you're done reading all that, you can start following the news more closely for the latest in quantum computing, which will turn all our existing crypto techniques (barring only the newest ones based on quantum physics itself) into a pile of poo.
Posted by: Thinman | March 30, 2006 9:59 PM