The code book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

by Simon Singh

An overview of cryptography from ancient times with the use of the Caesar cipher to more recent cryptographic developments up to the year 2000. Heard a lot of good things about this book, looking forward to starting it. A lot happened after the year 2000 in the crypto world, but this is a good introduction before diving deeper later on.

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Last update: 2025-08-30
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Another important question raised by the author: 'What do we value more, privacy or safety?' .. This reminds me of what Snowden said in the documentary..People think they want freedom, but what they actually want is security, and for that they have to sacrifice privacy. Regardless of whether you agree or not, this topic is huge and the conflict between security and privacy is hard to solve. Either everything you do is encrypted and thus it's harder for police to catch bad actors, or things are transparent but then you lose your privacy. Food for thought...
I liked the analogy between code and bacteria! Code is no longer useful when codebreakers manage to find its weakness, just like bacteria dies when doctors find the antibiotic! They both need to evolve if they want to continue surviving.. Beautiful!
The need to encrypt and deliver messages in secret, without exposing a nation’s secrets, is much older than tech! It dates all the way back to ancient times. Back then, Alice and Bob were probably some white and black doves. :)
Was actually doing some CTFs related to cryptography, and those challanges made me want to start this book, so let's go!
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