Coding - Encryption
8.7. Further reading
The Wikipedia entry on cryptography has a fairly approachable entry going over the main terminology used in this chapter (and a lot more).
The encryption methods used these days rely on fairly advanced maths; for this reason books about encryption tend to either be beyond high school level, or else are about codes that aren't actually used in practice.
There are lots of intriguing stories around encryption, including its use in wartime and for spying e.g.
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How I Discovered World War II's Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code (David Kahn)
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Decrypted Secrets: Methods and Maxims of Cryptology (Friedrich L. Bauer)
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Secret History: The Story of Cryptology (Craig Bauer)
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The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet (David Kahn) – this book is an older version of his new book, and may be hard to get.
The following activities explore cryptographic protocols using an Unplugged approach; these methods aren't strong enough to use in practice, but provide some insight into what is possible:
War in the fifth domain looks at how encryption and security are key to our defence against a new kind of war.
There are lots of articles in cs4fn on cryptography, including a statistical attack that lead to a beheading.
The book "Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python: A beginner's guide to cryptography and computer programming with Python" (by Al Sweigart) goes over some simple ciphers including ones mentioned in this chapter, and how they can be programmed (and attacked) using Python programs.
- How Stuff Works entry on Encryption
- Cryptool is a free system for trying out classical and modern encryption methods. Some are beyond the scope of this chapter, but many will be useful for running demonstrations and experiments in cryptography.
- Wikipedia entry on Cryptographic keys
- Wikipedia entry on the Caesar cipher
- Videos about modern encryption methods
- Online interactives for simple ciphers
