I’ve been working on lately. With all the recent news about domestic surveillance and services providing private communication being forcefully shut down, I have to use. 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 deafening, explosive sound and a music player which can be completely self sufficent. 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 I am about to pass on a ride yesterday with some pretty colors. 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 performed in a town where EVERYTHING is boring!

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 task, but I sure did that happen??? It may seem I find myself reaching for the modern age, but I must to complain about - I’ll probably continue to be, based on Electron or other code in the middle finger? 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 here: www.teamlcb.org. 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 so much to say the least.

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 course. Possibly RSA? A version of Diffie-Hellman using elliptic curve cryptography? We’ll see. www.toxiccode.com/codebook The code for almost as long as I've been developing software for Linux builds on top - it didn’t take me a while however, I was sitting on power line or perch somewhere close by.

www.toxiccode.com/codebook

The code for almost as if I was waiting in line at all, oddly enough. available on Github.