Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Rating – 8 / 10
In layman’s terms, Cryptology can be easily described as a race between a cracker and a hacker, where one is trying to protect a piece of information and the other is trying to steal it. It’s difficult to say which one of the two is justified in doing whatever he/she is doing and depends highly on what the information is. That’s precisely what the bottom line of this book is. For keeping only certain information as encrypted (and all the else as visible), the US government has to decrypt something which they have no clue about.
The protagonist, Susan Fletcher, is a cryptologist in the NSA (National Security Agency). Trouble starts when a rebel from this organization (Ensei Tankado) takes this high level government organization for a ride when he gives them a ‘puzzle’ to solve. If they are unable to solve it, all their information/secrets will go public – a splendidly plotted digital extortion. The only problem is that he gets killed very early in the novel. That completely eliminates the option for any negotiation and leaves only one option – to crack the code.
It’s the code-cracking, the concept of being helpless against an even better technology, and the amazingly gripping nature of the novel which interested me the most. But the biggest trick is that there is no code to crack. It’s just a worm which will remove all firewalls from all classified information of the US government! This end was a massive letdown. In spite of that, this book is certainly a must-read. And if you’re a puzzle or a Sudoku lover, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy every moment of it.
In layman’s terms, Cryptology can be easily described as a race between a cracker and a hacker, where one is trying to protect a piece of information and the other is trying to steal it. It’s difficult to say which one of the two is justified in doing whatever he/she is doing and depends highly on what the information is. That’s precisely what the bottom line of this book is. For keeping only certain information as encrypted (and all the else as visible), the US government has to decrypt something which they have no clue about.
The protagonist, Susan Fletcher, is a cryptologist in the NSA (National Security Agency). Trouble starts when a rebel from this organization (Ensei Tankado) takes this high level government organization for a ride when he gives them a ‘puzzle’ to solve. If they are unable to solve it, all their information/secrets will go public – a splendidly plotted digital extortion. The only problem is that he gets killed very early in the novel. That completely eliminates the option for any negotiation and leaves only one option – to crack the code.
It’s the code-cracking, the concept of being helpless against an even better technology, and the amazingly gripping nature of the novel which interested me the most. But the biggest trick is that there is no code to crack. It’s just a worm which will remove all firewalls from all classified information of the US government! This end was a massive letdown. In spite of that, this book is certainly a must-read. And if you’re a puzzle or a Sudoku lover, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy every moment of it.
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