Davi Kahn Code breakers criptologia criptografia codigos hacker mistério secreto signais etc

Davi Kahn

Code breakers

New York: Macmillan

1967.

Includes three sections of black and white plates and a few text illustrations.
The first comprehensive history of secret communication from ancient times to the threshold of outer space. coda2-x10.

The author tells how the secret activities of cryptanalysts have often determined the outcome of battles and diplomatic coups. He recounts the impact of the events that have molded modern cryptology, portrays the outstanding personalities of the science, and outlines the techniques used to break the most advanced machine ciphers.

Highlights include: How German read the coded messages of the U.S. State Department in 1942 and foiled some American plans in North Africa. How the weakness of Czarist army ciphers largely enabled Germany to defeat Russia in 1917. How John F Kennedy escaped capture in the Pacific because the Japanese failed to solve a simple cipher. How cryptanalysis and forgery led to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.


"Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break," writes David Kahn in this massive volume.
Most of The Codebreakers focuses on the 20th century, especially World War II. But its reach is long. Kahn traces cryptology's origins to the advent of writing. It seems that as soon as people learned how to record their thoughts, they tried to figure out ways of keeping them hidden. Kahn covers everything from the theory of ciphering to the search for "messages" from outer space. He concludes with a few thoughts about encryption on the Internet.


The magnificent, unrivaled history of codes and ciphers -- how they're made, how they're broken, and the many and fascinating roles they've played since the dawn of civilization in war, business, diplomacy, and espionage -- updated with a new chapter on computer cryptography and the Ultra secret.

Man has created codes to keep secrets and has broken codes to learn those secrets since the time of the Pharaohs. For 4,000 years, fierce battles have been waged between codemakers and codebreakers, and the story of these battles is civilization's secret history, the hidden account of how wars were won and lost, diplomatic intrigues foiled, business secrets stolen, governments ruined, computers hacked.

From the XYZ Affair to the Dreyfus Affair, from the Gallic War to the Persian Gulf, from Druidic runes and the kaballah to outer space, from the Zimmermann telegram to Enigma to the Manhattan Project, codebreaking has shaped the course of human events to an extent beyond any easy reckoning. Once a government monopoly, cryptology today touches everybody.

It secures the Internet, keeps e-mail private, maintains the integrity of cash machine transactions, and scrambles TV signals on unpaid-for channels. David Kahn's The Codebreakers takes the measure of what codes and codebreaking have meant in human history in a single comprehensive account, astonishing in its scope and enthralling in its execution.


The Codebreakers is the skeleton key to a thousand thrilling true stories of intrigue, mystery, and adventure. It is a masterpiece of the historian's art.


About the Author

David Kahn, a recently visiting historian at the National Security Agency, is the world's leading expert on the history of cryptology, and the author of Hitler's Spies, Seizing the Enigma, and Kahn on Codes, as well as articles in numerous popular and technical journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Modern History from Oxford. An editor at Newsday, he lives in Great Neck, New York.


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David Kahn foi nomeado como doutor (DPhil) pela Universidade de Oxford em 1974 na área de História Moderna da Alemanha, baixo a supervisião do professor de história moderna Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Trabalhou como repórter e como editor opcional (op-ed) para a revista "Newsday" até 1998, como jornalista durante uns anos na Universidade de Nova York. No ano 1995, Kahn foi seleccionado como scholar na residência da "National Security Agency".


O livro de Kahn: The Codebreakers, considerado uma obra mestre (e livro de referência) em temas de história da criptografía. Supôs uma novidade muito grande, máxima quando por aquela época a criptografía na segunda guerra mundial era considerada ainda um tema classificado.