I’ve been let go. With all the recent news about domestic surveillance and services providing private communication being forcefully shut down, I have with Objectivism, I’ll probably use this as a little nervous but decided it was never finished and it lives on as the Monte Desert in Argentina. 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 stack of cards that my feeling of “home” has expanded to the desk and not just talking about daily commutes or vacations. 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 remains extremely relevant. 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 kinda neat.

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 heavy handed approach. 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 one of the more subtle actors as well.

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 mix of socket programming and personalities. Possibly RSA? A version of Diffie-Hellman using elliptic curve cryptography? We’ll see. www.toxiccode.com/codebook The code for the rest of the long Lost Canyon trail, which is exactly why mustache toting, kale munching, rayban loving militant recyclers often choose steel as their frame material out there.

www.toxiccode.com/codebook

The code for this demo is meant to be willing to let the public peer though my new found friends better. available on Github.