ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Several people mentioned this in the "What have you read recently" thread. It sounded like it was up my alley, and I did enjoy it.
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
However, in the very first chapter, before they got into all the 'heavy' stuff - I just missed something. I re-read the chapter and still missed it. Can anyone explain?
Mary Queen of Scots was kept under guard, and Gilbert Gifford started smuggling letters from supporters in to her and her replies back out. Gifford was a double agent, and hoped to intercept incriminating letters between her and her supporters. One of the letters plotting her escape was encrypted by the sender (Babington). Gifford had a copy of the letter sent to be decrypted, and Mary's encrypted reply was also decrypted, providing evidence against her.
Here's what I don't get: How did Mary decrypt the message? It says Gifford read and copied every correspondence in and out. So, if the key was sent to Mary, Gifford would have it and he would not have had to go to the effort of 'breaking' the code. But if the key was not sent to Mary, she couldn't read the message either (or encode her replies). There is a gap here, or I missed it on a 3rd reading also.
This might seem trivial, but a significant portion of the book is dedicated to the problems of transferring and exposing the keys. So it seems important to cover this in the introductory story.
I had an easier time with their quantum computing, dual state, polarized photon examples!
BTW, this is the 1st edition, maybe this was re-written in the second?
-ERD50
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
However, in the very first chapter, before they got into all the 'heavy' stuff - I just missed something. I re-read the chapter and still missed it. Can anyone explain?
Mary Queen of Scots was kept under guard, and Gilbert Gifford started smuggling letters from supporters in to her and her replies back out. Gifford was a double agent, and hoped to intercept incriminating letters between her and her supporters. One of the letters plotting her escape was encrypted by the sender (Babington). Gifford had a copy of the letter sent to be decrypted, and Mary's encrypted reply was also decrypted, providing evidence against her.
Here's what I don't get: How did Mary decrypt the message? It says Gifford read and copied every correspondence in and out. So, if the key was sent to Mary, Gifford would have it and he would not have had to go to the effort of 'breaking' the code. But if the key was not sent to Mary, she couldn't read the message either (or encode her replies). There is a gap here, or I missed it on a 3rd reading also.
This might seem trivial, but a significant portion of the book is dedicated to the problems of transferring and exposing the keys. So it seems important to cover this in the introductory story.
I had an easier time with their quantum computing, dual state, polarized photon examples!
BTW, this is the 1st edition, maybe this was re-written in the second?
-ERD50
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