Johannes Trithemius' Polygraphiae (1518) — the first printed book on cryptology.

Books on cryptography have been published sporadically, and with highly variable quality, for a long time. This is despite the tempting, though superficial, paradox that secrecy is of the essence in sending confidential messages — see Kerckhoffs' law. From NSA museum: This image is in the public domain in the United States and possibly other jurisdictions. ... From NSA museum: This image is in the public domain in the United States and possibly other jurisdictions. ... Polygraphia (1518) — the first printed book on cryptography. ... Robert Boyles self-flowing flask fills itself in this diagram, but perpetual motion machines cannot exist. ... In cryptography, Kerckhoffs law (also called Kerckhoffs assumption, axiom or principle) was stated by Auguste Kerckhoffs in the 19th century: a cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge. ...

In contrast, the revolution in cryptography and secure communications of the last 25 years is well covered in the available literature. The Enigma machine, used by Germany in World War II, implemented a complex cipher to protect sensitive communications. ... The term communications is used in a number of disciplines: Communications, also known as communication studies is the academic discipline which studies communication, generally seen as a mixture between media studies and linguistics. ...

Early history

An early example of a book about cryptography was a Roman work, now lost and known only by references. Many of the early works on cryptography were esoteric, mystical, and reputation-promoting; cryptography being mysterious, there was much opportunity for such things. At least one work by Trithemius was put on the Index (ie, banned) by the Catholic Church as being about black magic or witchcraft. Many writers claimed to have invented unbreakable ciphers. None were, though it sometimes took a long while to establish this. This article is about algorithms for encryption and decryption. ...

In the 19th century, the general standard improved somewhat (eg, works by Auguste Kerckhoffs, Friedrich Kasiski, and Étienne Bazeries). Colonel Parker Hitt and William Friedman in the early 20th century also wrote books on cryptography. These authors, and others, mostly abandoned any mystical or magical tone. Auguste Kerckhoffs Dr Auguste Kerckhoffs (19 January 1835 - 1903) was a Flemish linguist and cryptographer who was professor of languages at the School of Higher Commercial Studies in Paris in the late 19th century. ... Major Friedrich Wilhelm Kasiski (29 November 1805 - 22 May 1881) was a Prussian infantry officer, cryptographer and archeologist. ... Étienne Bazeries (21 August 1846 - 7 November 1931) was a French military cryptanalyst active between 1890 and the First World War. ... William Friedman. ...

Open literature versus classified literature

With the invention of radio, much of military communications went wireless, allowing the possiblity of enemy interception much more readily than tapping into a landline, increasing the need to protect communications using sufficiently strong cryptography. By the end of World War I, cryptography and its literature began to be both 'official', and 'classified'. Combatants Entente Powers Central Powers Commanders {{{commander1}}} {{{commander2}}} Strength {{{strength1}}} {{{strength2}}} Casualties > 5 million military deaths > 3 million military deaths {{{notes}}} World War I, also known as the First World War and (before 1939) the Great War, the War of the Nations, War to End All Wars, was a world...

Thereupon, publicly available material started to diverge more than before from actual cryptographic, and cryptanalytic, practice, largely by 'leaving things out'. There began a period in which public descriptions of cryptography were either intended for children, deliberately misleading, or limited to historical issues. Some, such as The American Black Chamber by Herbert Yardley were mixtures of everything, including a return to the personal reputation puffery of the Renaissance, and more than a little magical gee whiz. Herbert O. Yardley Herbert Osborne Yardley (13 April 1889-7 August 1958) was an American cryptologist most known for his book The American Black Chamber (1931). ... By region Italian Renaissance Spanish Renaissance Northern Renaissance English Renaissance French Renaissance German Renaissance Polish Renaissance The Renaissance, also known as Il Rinascimento (in Italian), was an influential cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution, religious reform and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern European history. ...

The Codebreakers

Until the late twentieth century most aspects of modern cryptography were regarded as the special concern of governments and the military, and were protected by custom and, in some cases, by statute. The most significant work to be published on cryptography in this period is undoubtedly David Kahn's The Codebreakers, which was published at a time (mid-1960s) when virtually no information on the modern practice of cryptography was available. Kahn has said that over ninety percent of its content was previously unpublished. The book caused serious concern at the NSA despite its lack of coverage of specific modern cryptographic practice, so much so that after failing to prevent the book being published NSA staff were informed to not even acknowledge the existence of the book if asked. In the US military, mere possession of a copy by cryptographic personnel was grounds for some considerable suspicion. Perhaps the single greatest importance of the book was the impact it had on the next generation of cryptographers. Whitfield Diffie has made comments in interviews about the effect it had on him. David Kahn is a US historian, journalist and writer. ... The Codebreakers - The Story of Secret Writing (ISBN 0684831309) is a book written by David Kahn in 1967 chronicling the history of cryptology from ancient Egypt to the time of its writing. ... NSA can stand for: National Security Agency of the USA The British Librarys National Sound Archive This page concerning a three-letter acronym or abbreviation is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Whitfield Diffie Bailey Whitfield Whit Diffie (born June 5, 1944) is a US cryptographer and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography. ...

Early 21st-century conditions

Since the flourishing of an academic field of cryptography starting in the mid 1970s, there are many books which have since been published on cryptography. Much information that was top secret a half century ago is now available to the public. Principles and techniques of major parts of contemporary cipher design have also in many cases been published. It is unknown (publicly) if the open literature of modern cryptography has caught up with the knowledge of government agencies.

The list

Significant books on cryptography include:

Cryptographic techniques

Heavily mathematical

• A. J. Menezes, P. C. van Oorschot, and S. A. Vanstone - Handbook of Applied Cryptography ISBN 0849385237 (online version). Equivalent to Applied Cryptography in many ways, but heavily mathematical. For the technically inclined. Covers few meta-cryptographic topics, such as crypto system design. This is currently (2004) regarded as the standard reference work in technical cryptography.
• Lawrence Washington - Elliptic Curves: Number Theory and Cryptography ISBN 1584883650. A book focusing on elliptic curves that begins at the undergraduate level (for those who have had a course on abstract algebra) and progresses into much more advanced topics, even at the end touching on Andrew Wiles' proof of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture which led to the proof of Fermat's last theorem.
• Douglas Stinson - Cryptography: Theory and Practice ISBN 1584885084. Somewhere between HAC and Applied Cryptography in terms of mathematical details. Covers topics in a textbook style but with more mathematical detail then is usual. Has been adopted as the text for many university courses in cryptography.
• Dominic Welsh -- Codes and Cryptography, Oxford University Press, 1988. A brief textbook intended for undergraduates. Some coverage of fundamental information theory. Requires some mathematical maturity; well written, and otherwise accessible.
• Oded Goldreich's Foundations of Cryptography series [1] provides a comprehensive formal treatment of the theory underlying modern cryptography. The focus is on mathematical abstractions, rigorous constructions and proof techniques; practical aspects are best sought elsewhere. It may require a computer science background.
  • Goldreich, Oded (2001). Foundations of Cryptography: Volume 1, Basic Tools. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79172-3 (fragments available at the author's web site). Discusses the basic constructs: one way functions, pseudorandomness and zero-knowledge proofs.
  • Goldreich, Oded (2004). Foundations of Cryptography: Volume 2, Basic Applications. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-83084-2 (drafts available at the author's web site). Using the tools developed in vol. 1, discusses encryption, digital signatures and cryptographic protocols.
• Mao, Wenbo (2004).Modern Cryptography Theory and Practice ISBN 0130669431. A more uptodate self contained book on cryptography. It does touch upon provable security. It is written with students and practioners in mind.

• Patterson, Wayne (1987). Mathematical Cryptology for Computer Scientists and Mathmeticians, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 0-8476-7438-X

• Konheim, Alan G. (1981). Cryptography: A Primer, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-08132-9

Menezes can refer to: Fradique de Menezes, President of São Tomé and Príncipe Glória Menezes, actress Henry Menezes, manager of Mahindra United football club Holdemar Menezes, writer Jean Charles de Menezes, shot dead in London in 2005 by police who mistook him for a terrorist Tony Menezes... A cryptosystem (or cryptographic system) is the package of all procedures, protocols, cryptographic algorithms and instructions used for encoding and decoding messages using cryptography. ... Major Lawrence Washington (1659-1698) was the grandfather of George Washington. ... In mathematics, elliptic curves are defined by certain cubic (the superscript exponent is three, a. ... Abstract algebra is the field of mathematics concerned with the study of algebraic structures such as groups, rings and fields. ... Sir Andrew John Wiles (born April 11, 1953) is a British mathematician living in the United States. ... The Taniyama-Shimura theorem establishes an important connection between elliptic curves, which are objects from algebraic geometry, and modular forms, which are certain periodic holomorphic functions investigated in number theory. ... Pierre de Fermat Fermats last theorem (sometimes abbreviated as FLT and also called Fermats great theorem) is one of the most famous theorems in the history of mathematics. ... Professor Oded Goldreich Oded Goldreich is a professor of Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. ... A one-way function is a function which is easy to calculate but hard to invert — it is difficult to calculate the input to the function given its output. ... A cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generator (CSPRNG) is a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) with properties that make it suitable for use in cryptography. ... In cryptography, a zero-knowledge proof is an interactive method for one party to prove to another that a (usually mathematical) statement is true, without revealing anything other than the veracity of the statement. ... In cryptography, encryption is the process of obscuring information to make it unreadable without special knowledge. ... Digital signature (or public-key digital signature) is a type of method for authenticating digital information analogous to ordinary physical signatures on paper, but implemented using techniques from the field of public-key cryptography. ...

Less mathematical

• Ferguson, Niels, and Schneier, Bruce - Practical Cryptography, Wiley, 2003, ISBN 0471223573. A cryptography reference. Covers both algorithms and protocols. This is an in depth consideration of one cryptographic problem, including paths not taken and some reasons why. At the time of its publication, most of the material was not otherwise available in a single source. Some was not otherwise available. In a sense, a follow-up to Applied Cryptography.
• Schneier, Bruce - Applied Cryptography, 2 ed, Wiley, 1996, (ISBN 0471117099). The most accessible single volume available covering modern cryptographic practice, and approachable by the non mathematically oriented. Incredibly, not exhaustive. Extensive bibliography which can serve as an entry into the modern literature. Less immediately mathematical than some others, eg Menezes et al Handbook of Applied Cryptography. Note however, that the lack of extensive proofs and notation does not imply that the mathematical concepts are optional. Modern cryptography is fundamentally based on mathematics and Schneier covers it here, just not formally.
• Nigel Smart - Cryptography: An introduction ISBN 0077099877. Similar in intent to Applied Cryptography but less comprehensive. Covers more modern material and is aimed at undergraduates covering topics such as number theory and group theory not generally covered in cryptography books.
• Mel, H.X., and Baker, Doris -- Cryptography Decrypted, Addison Wesley 2001, ISBN 0-201-61647-5. This pictorial technical overview of basic cryptographic components explains the evolution of cryptography from the simplest concepts to some of the most complex. It details the basics of symmetric key, public key, MACs, SSL, secure mail and IPsec. No math background is required, though there's some public key mathematics in the appendix.

Niels Ferguson is a Dutch cryptographic engineer and consultant. ... Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer. ... Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer. ... Nigel Smart (born 21 May, 1969), was an Australian rules footballer who had a career with the Adelaide Crows spanning from 1991 to 2004. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Group theory is that branch of mathematics concerned with the study of groups. ...

Cryptographic environment/context -- 'security'

• Schneier, Bruce - Secrets and Lies, Wiley, ISBN 0471253111, a discussion of the context within which cryptography and cryptosystems work. Practical Cryptography also includes some contextual material in the discussion of crypto system design.
• Schneier, Bruce -- Beyond Fear, Wiley, ISBN 0387026207
• Ross Anderson -- Security Engineering, Wiley, ISBN 0471389226, advanced coverage of computer security issues, including cryptography. Covers much more than merely cryptography. Brief on most topics due to the breadth of coverage.
• Edney, Jon and Arbaugh, William A -- Real 802.11 Security: Wi-Fi Protected Access and 802.11i, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0321136209, covers the use of cryptography in Wi-Fi networks. Includes details on Wi-Fi Protected Access (which is based on the IEEE 802.11i specification). The book is slightly out of date as it was written before IEEE 802.11i was finalized but much of the content is still useful for those who want to find out how encryption and authentication is done in a Wi-Fi network.

Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer. ... A cryptosystem (or cryptographic system) is the package of all procedures, protocols, cryptographic algorithms and instructions used for encoding and decoding messages using cryptography. ... Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer. ... Ross J. Anderson is a researcher, writer, and industry consultant in security engineering. ... Wi-Fi (also WiFi, Wi-fi, Wifi, or wifi) is a set of product compatibility standards for wireless local area networks (WLAN) based on the IEEE 802. ... Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and WPA2) is a class of systems to secure wireless (Wi-Fi) computer networks. ... IEEE 802. ...

History of cryptography

• Bamford, James, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency (ISBN 0140067485), and the more recent Body of Secrets. The first is one of a very few books about the US Government's NSA. The second is also about NSA but concentrates more on its history. There is some very interesting material in Body of Secrets about US attempts (the TICOM mission) to investigate German cryptographic efforts immediately as WW II wound down.
• Gustave Bertrand, Enigma ou la plus grande énigme de la guerre 1939–1945 (Enigma: the Greatest Enigma of the War of 1939-1945), Paris, 1973. The first public disclosure in the West of the breaking of Enigma, by the chief of French military cryptography prior to WW II. The first public disclosure anywhere was made in the first edition of Bitwa o tajemnice by the late Władysław Kozaczuk.
• James Gannon, Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century, Washington, D.C., Brassey's, 2001: an overview of major 20th-century episodes in cryptology and espionage, particularly strong regarding the misappropriation of credit for conspicuous achievements.
• Kahn, David - The Codebreakers (ISBN 0684831309) A single-volume source for cryptographic history, at least for events up to the mid-'60s (ie, to just before DES and the public release of asymmetric key cryptography). The added chapter on more recent developments (in the most recent edition) is quite thin. Kahn has written other books and articles on cryptography, and on cryptographic history. They are very highly regarded.
• Kozaczuk, Władysław, Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War II, edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, MD, 1984: a history of cryptological efforts against Enigma, concentrating on the contributions of Polish mathematicians Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski; of particular interest to specialists will be several technical appendices by Rejewski.
• Levy, Steven - Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government, Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (ISBN 0140244328): a journalistic overview of the development of public cryptographic techniques and the US regulatory context for cryptography. This is an account of a major policy conflict.
• Singh, Simon, The Code Book (ISBN 1857028899): an anecdotal introduction to the history of cryptography. Covers more recent material than does even the revised edition of Kahn's The Codebreakers. Clearly written and quite readable. The included cryptanalytic contest has been won and the prize awarded, but the cyphertexts are still worth attempting.
• Bauer, F L, Decrypted Secrets, This book is unusual. It is both a history of cryptography, and a discussion of mathematical topics related to cryptography. In his review, David Kahn said he thought it the best book he'd read on the subject. It is essentially two books, in more or less alternating chapters. Originally in German, and the translation shows it in places. Some surprising content, eg, in the discussion of President Edgar Hoover's Secretary of State, Henry Stimson.
• Budiansky, Stephen, Battle of Wits: a one-volume history of cryptography in WW II. It is well written, well researched, and responsible. Technical material (eg, a description of the cryptanalysis of Enigma) is limited, but clearly presented.
• Prados, John -- Combined Fleet Decoded, An account of cryptography in the Pacific Theatre of World War II with special emphasis on the Japanese side. Reflects extensive research in Japanese sources and recently available US material. Contains material not previously accessible or unvailable.
• Marks, Leo, Between Silk and Cyanide: a Codemaker's Story, 1941-1945, (HarperCollins, 1998). (ISBN 068486780X). A humorous but informative account of code-making and -breaking in Britain's WWII Special Operations Executive.
• Yardley, Herbert, The American Black Chamber: a classic 1931 account of American code-breaking during and after WWI (ISBN 0345298675).

The history of cryptography dates back thousands of years, and for the most part, it has been the history of classical cryptography; that is, methods of encryption which can be performed using pen and paper (or perhaps with simple mechanical aids). ... James Bamford ( - ) is the author of A Pretext For War, A Body of Secrets and The Puzzle Palace. ... TICOM (Target Intelligence Committee) was a project formed immediately after the end of World War II by the United States to find and seize German intelligence assets, particularly cryptographic ones. ... Gustave Bertrand (died 1976) was a French military intelligence officer who made a vital contribution to the decryption, by Polands Cipher Bureau, of German Enigma ciphers beginning in December 1932. ... James Gannon is a freelance writer and producer of documentaries for NBC News. ... The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. ... Cryptography (from Greek kryptós, hidden, and gráphein, to write) is, traditionally, the study of means of converting information from its normal, comprehensible form into an incomprehensible format, rendering it unreadable without secret knowledge — the art of encryption. ... Espionage is the practice of obtaining secrets (spying) from rivals or enemies for military, political, or economic advantage. ... David Kahn is a US historian, journalist and writer. ... The Codebreakers - The Story of Secret Writing (ISBN 0684831309) is a book written by David Kahn in 1967 chronicling the history of cryptology from ancient Egypt to the time of its writing. ... PKC, see PKC (disambiguation) Public-key cryptography is a form of modern cryptography which allows users to communicate securely without previously agreeing on a shared secret key. ... WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Kozaczuk (1923 — 2003, Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish historian who published a dozen books, several of them in multiple editions. ... Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a writer and a translator from Polish into English. ... Marian Rejewski (probably 1932, the year he broke Enigma). ... Jerzy Różycki, about 1928. ... Henryk Zygalski, about 1930. ... Simon Singh Simon Lehna Singh (born 1964) is a British author with a doctorate in physics, who has specialized in writing about mathematical and scientific topics in an accessible manner. ... The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography is a book written by Simon Singh and published in 1999 by Doubleday of New York; ISBN 0-385-49531-5 The Code Book covers a diverse set of historical topics including The Man in... In the history of cryptography, the Enigma was a portable cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. ... Leo Marks at the opening of the Violette Szabo Museum, Wormelow Leopold Samuel Marks (September 24, 1920 - January 15, 2001) was an English cryptographer and scriptwriter. ... Combatants Allied Powers Axis Powers Commanders {{{commander1}}} {{{commander2}}} Strength {{{strength1}}} {{{strength2}}} Casualties 17 million military deaths 7 million military deaths {{{notes}}} World War II, also known as the Second World War (sometimes WW2 or WWII or World War Two), was a mid-20th century conflict that engulfed much of the... The Special Operations Executive (SOE), often called the Baker Street Irregulars after Sherlock Holmess fictional group of spies, was a World War II organisation initiated by Winston Churchill and Hugh Dalton in July 1940 as a mechanism for conducting warfare by means other than direct military engagement. ... Herbert O. Yardley Herbert Osborne Yardley (13 April 1889-7 August 1958) was an American cryptologist most known for his book The American Black Chamber (1931). ... 1931 (MCMXXXI) is a common year starting on Thursday. ... WWI may be an acronym for: World War I World Wrestling Industry This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Historic works

• Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Sabbah Al-Kindi, (A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages), 9th century included first known explanation of frequency analysis cryptanalysis
• Roger Bacon (English friar and polymath), Epistle on the secret Works of Art and Nobility of Magic, 13th century, possibly the first European work on cryptography since Classical times, written in Latin and not widely available then or now
• Johannes Trithemius, Steganographia ("Hidden Writing"), written ca. 1499; pub 1606, banned by the Catholic Church 1609 as alleged discussion of magic, see Polygraphiae (below).
• Johannes Trithemius, Polygraphiae Libri Sex ("Six Books on Polygraphy"), 1518, first printed book on cryptography (thought to really be about magic by some observers at the time)
• Giovan Batista Belaso, La cifra del. Sig. Giovan Batista Belaso, 1553, first pub of the cypher widely misattributed to Vigenère.
• Giambattista della Porta, De Furtivis Literarum Notis ("On concealed characters in writing"), 1563.
• Blaise de Vigenère, Traicte de Chiffres, 1585.
• Gustavus Selenus, Cryptomenytics, 1624, (modern era English trans by J W H Walden)
• John Wilkins, Mercury, 1647, earliest printed book in English about cryptography
• Friedrich Kasiski, Die Geheimschriften und die Dechiffrierkunst ("Secret writing and the Art of Deciphering"), pub 1863, contained the first public description of a technique for cryptanalyzing polyalphabetic cyphers.
• Etienne Bazeries, Les Chiffres secrets dévoilés ("Secret ciphers unveiled") about 1900.
• Émile Victor Théodore Myszkowski, Cryptographie indéchiffrable: basée sur de nouvelles combinaisons rationelles ("Unbreakable cryptography"), published 1902.

Al-Kindi (Arabic: أبو يعقوب يوسف بن إسحاق الكندي) was a Arabn philosopher, scientist and ophthalmologist. ... In mathematics, physics and signal processing, frequency analysis is a method to decompose a function, wave, or signal into its frequency components so that it is possible to have the frequency spectrum. ... Cryptanalysis (from the Greek kryptós, hidden, and analýein, to loosen or to untie) is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information which is normally required to do so. ... Statue of Roger Bacon in the Oxford University Museum Roger Bacon (c. ... Polygraphia (1518) — the first printed book on cryptography. ... This article deals with magic in the context of religion and the anthropology of religion. ... Polygraphia (1518) — the first printed book on cryptography. ... Image:Giovanni della Porta. ... Blaise de Vigenère (April 5, 1523 - 1596) was a French diplomat and cryptographer. ... John Wilkins. ... Major Friedrich Wilhelm Kasiski (29 November 1805 - 22 May 1881) was a Prussian infantry officer, cryptographer and archeologist. ... Étienne Bazeries (21 August 1846 - 7 November 1931) was a French military cryptanalyst active between 1890 and the First World War. ...

Overview of cryptography

• Piper, Fred and Sean Murphy - Cryptography : A Very Short Introduction ISBN 0192803158 This book outlines the major goals, uses, methods, and developments in cryptography.

Fiction

• Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon (ISBN 0060512806) The adventures of some World War II codebreakers and their modern day progeny.
• Robert Harris - Enigma 1995. ISBN 0099992000.
• Edgar Allan Poe - The Gold-Bug (1843) An eccentric man discovers an ancient parchment which contains a cryptogram which, when solved, leads to the discovery of buried treasure. Includes a lengthy discourse on a method of solving a simple cypher.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Dancing Men. Holmes becomes involved in a case which features messages left lying around. They are written in a substitution cypher, which Holmes promptly discerns. Solving the cypher leads to solving the case.
• Dan Brown - Digital Fortress (1997) The head of the National Security Agency's cryptography division, finds herself faced with an unbreakable code and must find a solution to stop the spreading of the code.

Neal Town Stephenson (b. ... Cryptonomicon is a sprawling novel by Neal Stephenson that is more a combination of historical fiction and contemporary techno-thriller than the science fiction of Stephensons earlier works. ... Combatants Allied Powers Axis Powers Commanders {{{commander1}}} {{{commander2}}} Strength {{{strength1}}} {{{strength2}}} Casualties 17 million military deaths 7 million military deaths {{{notes}}} World War II, also known as the Second World War (sometimes WW2 or WWII or World War Two), was a mid-20th century conflict that engulfed much of the... Cryptanalysis (from the Greek kryptós, hidden, and analýein, to loosen or to untie) is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information without access to the secret information which is normally required to do so. ... This daguerreotype of Poe was taken less than a year before his death at the age of 40. ... In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encryption by which units of plaintext are substituted with ciphertext according to a regular system; the units may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth. ... Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (May 22, 1859 - July 7, 1930) is the British author most famously known for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction. ... Dan Brown (born June 22, 1964) is an American author of thriller fiction. ... Digital Fortress book cover Picture of La Giralda Cathedral Digital Fortress is a novel written by American author Dan Brown and published in 1998 by St. ...

External links

Wikibooks has more about this subject:

Cryptography

• Listing and reviews for a large number of books in cryptography
• Short description of few books on cryptography
• List of where cryptography features in literature — list is presented in German.