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I just wanted to thank you for this fantastic comment. Security history is fascinating, and this provides a ton of new material for me to osmose. Do you have

I just wanted to thank you for this fantastic comment. Security history is fascinating, and this provides a ton of new material for me to osmose. Do you have any more reading recommendations? I've been wanting to research the WW2 period up through the end of the cold war in particular.

fazzone 13y ago
If you are interested in that sort of thing, I highly recommend the novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson - it is partly about the activities of a joint British/American counterintelligence unit whose mission is to make sure the Axis does not figure out that the Allies have broken their codes. It's also a great read in general.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Hah! I just composed my reply above and included this as well. Stephenson's acknowledgements also serve as something of an indirect bibliography to some of his sources -- his books in general are fantastically well researched, and often better as learning tools than nominally nonfiction texts (though you do have to keep in mind that they are works of fiction). They're generally much more engaging, for starters (after the first 100-300 pages or so...).
  - beloch 13y ago
    He may have done too much research on Captain Crunch breakfast cereal for that one...
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      But you've got to admit that he has his technical execution down to a T there.
- munin 13y ago
  Cryptonomicon is a pretty shallow treatment of intelligence during ww2, and Stephenson makes stuff up (as fiction, he doesn't claim it is fact) when the truth is even more outlandish. I would recommend the following books: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743217349 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743217349 http://www.amazon.com/dp/006097771X/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/006097771X/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679762892 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679762892 http://www.amazon.com/dp/068486780X/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/068486780X/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0452287472 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0452287472 http://www.amazon.com/dp/1452206120/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1452206120/
  - e12e 13y ago
    I trust Singh's "the Code Book" is hiding behind one of those amazon links?
    - mjolk 13y ago
      Don't be so lazy. If you're just interested, click and find out. If you feel it should be, suggest why it's an interesting read.
      - e12e 13y ago
        I thought it was clear that I think it belongs on a list of books that give a better treatment of codes, codebreaking and intelligence history than "Cryptonomicon" (as parent's list claim to be). As for being lazy, I'm not about to click through ten [edit six] links on my cell phone just to see what title hides behind the links; I appreciate that parent made a list of (presumably) relevant books -- I would have appreciated it more if he or she listed the actual book titles/authors as well. As it was; I felt it made sense to recommend Singh's book as it is very good and relevant -- and that it wouldn't contribute much to the discussion to overtly critize parent for being inconveniently (for me) lazy. But since you bring it up; personally I think it is good netiquette to prefix links with a meaningful title when not contained in the url, when posting in a mostly-plain-text medium. The title and author (optionally year) is relevant information -- an amazon link is trivially discoverable from that (as is a hit in your local library db) -- but the amazon link by itself isn't useful without leaving the context of the discussion. And opening ten tabs on a desktop browser on a reasonable fast connection is certainly not an insourmountable effort -- but is rather inconvenient on a cell phone (For all I know that might be why parent choose to list just the links -- mobile cut'n'paste between tabs is a pretty miserable).
dredmorbius 13y ago
I'm mostly just a vast store of useless information. Your comment brought up the association with the earlier story. I couldn't tell you the first place I encountered it, probably in some juvenile archive of war / spy stories, it's stuck with me through the years. As for things to read: I'm generally interested in, well, a lot of things, but crypto, security, organizational and national aspects of both, and the like. Schneier's Cryptography and his more recent works (most of which focus increasingly on human factors), comp.risks, The Art of War, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, random linkage through Wikipedia (highly underrated). Actually, for that last, I should probably write intentional linkage. Find some topic you're interested in, search for a few base articles, and follow the links out to other related aspects. Particularly case studies / people, and the like. If you're going to study WWII, I have to recommend Daniel Yergin's The Prize (either the book or the video series, I've viewed the latter and confess only skimmed through bits of the former, it's voluminous). The relationship of oil to the events of the 20th century simply cannot be overstated.

fazzone 13y ago

If you are interested in that sort of thing, I highly recommend the novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson - it is partly about the activities of a joint British/American counterintelligence unit whose mission is to make sure the Axis does not figure out that the Allies have broken their codes. It's also a great read in general.

dredmorbius 13y ago
Hah! I just composed my reply above and included this as well. Stephenson's acknowledgements also serve as something of an indirect bibliography to some of his sources -- his books in general are fantastically well researched, and often better as learning tools than nominally nonfiction texts (though you do have to keep in mind that they are works of fiction). They're generally much more engaging, for starters (after the first 100-300 pages or so...).
- beloch 13y ago
  He may have done too much research on Captain Crunch breakfast cereal for that one...
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    But you've got to admit that he has his technical execution down to a T there.
munin 13y ago
Cryptonomicon is a pretty shallow treatment of intelligence during ww2, and Stephenson makes stuff up (as fiction, he doesn't claim it is fact) when the truth is even more outlandish. I would recommend the following books: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743217349 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743217349 http://www.amazon.com/dp/006097771X/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/006097771X/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679762892 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679762892 http://www.amazon.com/dp/068486780X/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/068486780X/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0452287472 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0452287472 http://www.amazon.com/dp/1452206120/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1452206120/
- e12e 13y ago
  I trust Singh's "the Code Book" is hiding behind one of those amazon links?
  - mjolk 13y ago
    Don't be so lazy. If you're just interested, click and find out. If you feel it should be, suggest why it's an interesting read.
    - e12e 13y ago
      I thought it was clear that I think it belongs on a list of books that give a better treatment of codes, codebreaking and intelligence history than "Cryptonomicon" (as parent's list claim to be). As for being lazy, I'm not about to click through ten [edit six] links on my cell phone just to see what title hides behind the links; I appreciate that parent made a list of (presumably) relevant books -- I would have appreciated it more if he or she listed the actual book titles/authors as well. As it was; I felt it made sense to recommend Singh's book as it is very good and relevant -- and that it wouldn't contribute much to the discussion to overtly critize parent for being inconveniently (for me) lazy. But since you bring it up; personally I think it is good netiquette to prefix links with a meaningful title when not contained in the url, when posting in a mostly-plain-text medium. The title and author (optionally year) is relevant information -- an amazon link is trivially discoverable from that (as is a hit in your local library db) -- but the amazon link by itself isn't useful without leaving the context of the discussion. And opening ten tabs on a desktop browser on a reasonable fast connection is certainly not an insourmountable effort -- but is rather inconvenient on a cell phone (For all I know that might be why parent choose to list just the links -- mobile cut'n'paste between tabs is a pretty miserable).

dredmorbius 13y ago

I'm mostly just a vast store of useless information. Your comment brought up the association with the earlier story. I couldn't tell you the first place I encountered it, probably in some juvenile archive of war / spy stories, it's stuck with me through the years. As for things to read: I'm generally interested in, well, a lot of things, but crypto, security, organizational and national aspects of both, and the like. Schneier's Cryptography and his more recent works (most of which focus increasingly on human factors), comp.risks, The Art of War, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, random linkage through Wikipedia (highly underrated). Actually, for that last, I should probably write intentional linkage. Find some topic you're interested in, search for a few base articles, and follow the links out to other related aspects. Particularly case studies / people, and the like. If you're going to study WWII, I have to recommend Daniel Yergin's The Prize (either the book or the video series, I've viewed the latter and confess only skimmed through bits of the former, it's voluminous). The relationship of oil to the events of the 20th century simply cannot be overstated.