This is part of a sub-series of postings based on the "20 Books Cybersecurity Professionals Should Read Now".
Neil Stephenson is one of the leading authors in the "cyberpunk" genre, which I covered in a prior posting about Neuromancer. Not surprisingly, he has 3 of his works on this list. I already covered his earlier work, Snow Crash (1992). Now I move to what is considered his second masterpiece, Cryptonomicon.
In this work, there are two separate, but connected storylines. The storylines are separated by time, but have some of the same characters or linked between the two groups.
One storyline is set during WWII and centered around Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a young United States Navy code breaker and mathematical genius. He is assigned to the newly formed group called Detachment 2702. Their focus is to keep the Axis from knowing that the Allies has broken the Enigma code.
The second storyline is set in the 1990s, and centers around Randy Waterhouse (Lawrence's grandson). He involved in a venture with others that involved creating a secure data haven and cryptography.
The book gets into some cryptographic details, which may be off putting for some people.
I do recall after reading it at the time that I figured there would be a sequel, but instead he wrote a prequel trilogy called the Baroque Cycle.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Thursday, May 1, 2014
20 Books: Snow Crash
This is part of a sub-series of postings based on the "20 Books Cybersecurity Professionals Should Read Now".
Neil Stephenson is one of the leading authors in the "cyberpunk" genre, which I covered in a prior posting about Neuromancer. Not surprisingly, he has 3 of his works on this list. Snow Crash (1992) is the earliest of the three, so figured we'd start with this one.
Set in the near future where the United States (and probably the world) has broken down into a large number of sovereign enclaves. Most everything is privatized, including roads and mail service. The internet (cyberspace) is known as the Metaverse.
A new virus has been released which is both a computer virus and a neurological virus. The nominal heroes of the story, hacker Hiro Protaganist and Y.T., must work to figure out the mystery behind the Snow Crash virus before its too late.
While that seems fairly straight forward, Stephenson's works include a LOT of other concepts. We get ideas about language being a virus, and that our development of multiple languages was a defense from having a single language and its vulnerabilities.
Some of the concepts in the book actually inspired real systems, such as Google Earth.
Because of the interesting ideas in his works, I recommend checking Stephenson out.
Neil Stephenson is one of the leading authors in the "cyberpunk" genre, which I covered in a prior posting about Neuromancer. Not surprisingly, he has 3 of his works on this list. Snow Crash (1992) is the earliest of the three, so figured we'd start with this one.
Set in the near future where the United States (and probably the world) has broken down into a large number of sovereign enclaves. Most everything is privatized, including roads and mail service. The internet (cyberspace) is known as the Metaverse.
A new virus has been released which is both a computer virus and a neurological virus. The nominal heroes of the story, hacker Hiro Protaganist and Y.T., must work to figure out the mystery behind the Snow Crash virus before its too late.
While that seems fairly straight forward, Stephenson's works include a LOT of other concepts. We get ideas about language being a virus, and that our development of multiple languages was a defense from having a single language and its vulnerabilities.
Some of the concepts in the book actually inspired real systems, such as Google Earth.
Because of the interesting ideas in his works, I recommend checking Stephenson out.
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