Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age

I bought this book based on the recommendation of the professor who teaches my cyber security class, and since it is out of print, I took a chance and got a used one. The condition of the book is far better than I anticipated and the seller shipped it super fast.As for the content, it is interesting and engaging and Mr. Levy has done a great job at conveying the history and importance of cryptography and how it relates to cyber security on a level that is neither overly technical nor dumbed down. While the book was originally published nearly two decades ago, the information is still relevant today. He has written several other books including The Unicorn’s Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius, another I very much enjoyed.Whether or not you are working in the cyber security field, I feel like this is an important book for everyone to read, especially with all the rumblings of Russian hackers, data breeches on credit cards and social media accounts and all the other hacking and phreaking that’s going on right under our noses. Knowledge is power, and it is our best defense against those who seek to hurt us. This book will help you find your ammunition.

This story about the development of computer cryptography is both fascinating and important. The book is very well-written, and very easy to read. Its importance lies in the fact that it explains the machinations of government agencies to prevent the masses from using strong cryptography, and how the good guys in the software industry were able to overcome the obstacles. So, if you need a good read, go ahead and grab a copy.

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.

excellent book about the history of modern crypto

Fascinating book. Recommended for anyone who is interested in how great ideas get to market and how they can be smothered in their crib by government and, frankly, just bad management decisions. Some of the descriptions of encryption techniques get a bit heavy, but a) I was interested in that part too and b) if that is not your thing, jump ahead.

This author made a boring subject come alive! In addition, the writing actually made some the people interesting who focused mostly or solely on cryptography...ordinarily I would ignore single focus persons. But this book talked about their successes in a succint way that interested me.This is a GREAT author. I read his book about the Macintosh and that is why I purchased this book. I am adding AES encryption to a Windows CE device...so cryptography interests me. I also purchased Hackers and will read it later.

I'll save the complete review for goodreads, but as someone who is semi-interested in cryptography this is a fun read. The lengths that the NSA went to in order to quash attempts at building solid encryption are astounding. This book reads like a spy novel... albeit one with rather pasty and doughy spies.The book was in perfect condition and arrived quickly.

Levy does a good job of making a complex and potentially dry subject readable for a wide audience. Using an approach similar to the approach he took in _Hackers_, he uses the the personal history of the participants as a lens to study the history of a technology development._Crypto_ outlines the history of cryptography as it lurched towards public availability. Levy provides an overview of both technical and political obstacles that occurred along the way. Examines issues of control, personal freedom, and national security.

I've enjoyed Levy's other books on technology (beginning, a long time ago, with his classic Hackers) so was looking forward to reading his account of the development of modern cryptography. More specifically, the period he covers is from the mid-70s - when Diffie and Hellman solved the problem of distributing cryptographic keys, which immediately led to the development of public key cryptography - to the end of the 20th century, when the Internet was exploding in popularity and usage.He stops there because this book was written in 2000, but it's still an important read because of the way it describes the technical developments in cryptography and - more compellingly - the tension between researchers in this field, government agencies and commercial companies. Each of these communities had a specific and - usually - contentious view of the priorities associated with cryptography and privacy. The battle between them came to the fore in the debate over the clipper chip: an encryption device developed by the National Security Agency for voice and data messages which included a back-door to allow law enforcement to decode transmissions. Clipper was defunct less than three years after its introduction, partly because the government lost the debate over privacy, but mostly because of the widespread use of independently-developed public key cryptography.The issues discussed in this book have only become more important with the further extension of the Internet and our reliance on it in every day use (the book describes the initial attempts to introduce digital cash, for example), and society's evolving ideas about the prices we're willing to pay for privacy. Recommended.

A fascinating and incredibly detailed examination of the development of public key encryption by private individuals and their continuing battles with the US Government and the bureaucratic empire that the NSA had become. This account places Edward Snowden as only the latest of many people who have suffered for revealing the lack of clothes these emperors wear. Not difficult to read, written by a journalist rather than a computer geek, this is a splendid account of a struggle that is not over yet.

Este libro presenta de modo ameno la evolución de la criptografía desde finales de la segunda guerra mundial hasta nuestros días.Es muy útil para entender una evolución que ha desembocado en Blockchain, por ejemploSe lle como una novela y contiene las referencias necesarias para profundizar.El libro aparentemente no se se publica pero lo adquirí de uno de los vendedores de Amamzon, muy buen estado, entrega rápida y sin problemas

Prompt delivery, beautiful copy.