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Title: Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age by Steven Levy ISBN: 0-14-024432-8 Publisher: Penguin Putnam Pub. Date: 15 January, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (30 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent short history on the human side of pub. key crypto
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Plaintext review :)
Comment: It was a great to learn about the origins of crypto and the different people which brought about this revolution to protect privacy of everyone.At times i admit i had to read a paragraph twice as it became confusing sometimes but all in all a great book and a must read for anyone interested in crypto.
Rating: 3
Summary: Solid Journalism, Mediocre Literature
Comment: According to the flyleaf, David Kahn (who wrote "The
Codebreakers") said of this book that "Steven Levy has written
cryptography's 'The Soul of a New Machine'". There may be some
truth to that, but mostly it implies a level of prose that is not
in evidence in this book. Steven Levy is no Tracy Kidder, aside
from an occasional tendency to let his prose override his
writing. What Levy is, however, is a pretty good technology
journalist, and the book is at its best when it trades on that
background. Indeed, Levy used a great deal of research in this
book which doesn't appear to have been used for his earlier
magazine articles. While the book is not footnoted, there is an
extensive "notes" section at the end. There is also a
bibiliography, and an index.
One thing that Levy fails to do is make his "characters" come
across as fascinating individuals. This is not for lack of
trying -- clearly he finds them fascinating himself. However,
his prose fails him, particularly when trying to raise what a
journalist would call "human interest."
The strength of the book is not in its revelations of fact
either. The events described are already well-known to anybody
with an interest in the subject (in a number of cases,
particularly for events over the last decade, this is due to
Levy's own journalism in "Wired" and elsewhere). Aside from
filling in the history for those previously unaware of it, Levy's
interviewing skills turn up new evidence of the answers to one of
the most frequently repeated questions in the history of open
cryptography: "what were they thinking?"
For me, that is both the most important and the most interesting
question that Levy needed to face, and he takes it head-on. In
particular, he adds considerable scope (although little depth) to
describing the history of the Clipper chip. What were the NSA
(and the politicians) thinking? Well, as Levy describes it, the
key was the conflict between the FBI and the NSA, and the
illogical government approach was largely driven by the resulting
schizophrenia. Conspiracy nuts won't like that conclusion, but
it makes more sense than believing that the government really
expected it could put the crypto genie back into its bottle.
For those who don't appreciate the importance of crypto in the
Internet-connected age, this book is the best education in that
area. There is room for a better one to replace it, but it
doesn't exist now, and likely won't be written.
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Title: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy ISBN: 0141000511 Publisher: Penguin Putnam Pub. Date: 02 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh ISBN: 0385495323 Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday Pub. Date: 29 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll ISBN: 0743411463 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security by Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon, Steve Wozniak ISBN: 0471237124 Publisher: Wiley Pub. Date: 04 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: The Watchman : The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen by Jonathan Littman, Roger Donald ISBN: 0316528579 Publisher: Little, Brown Pub. Date: 31 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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