This battle becomes increasingly more intense and relevant, as the free-wheeling structure of the Internet increasingly collides with the perceived interests of individual citizens, with privacy, and with the interests and operations of law enforcement officials and national security organizations. Singh suggests that we are entering a golden age of cryptography. And I think it's going to stay that way. Singh offers a code -breaking challenge in 10 separate stages. I'll pass, but some of you might want take a shot at it.
Cryptography is a complex, even arcane subject for laypeople and non techno-heads to read about it.
To Singh's credit, he's written a book that cryptographers and newbies can love equally. You can pick this book up at Amazon . In 1991, future coverstar Linus Torvalds released a little kernel which has ended up working in synchrony with GNU utilities and various other software projects to live happily on millions of computers worldwide. Read about the beginnings of the Linux kernel peppered with anecdotes about growing up Finnish, straight from the horse's mouth, with Linus's book Just For Fun , coauthored by David Diamond. And for your more serious moments, we've run reviews lately of the sobering Hack Attacks Revealed and the very informative Digital Copyright by noted authority in the field Jessica Litman.