home
Health
Interesting cryptography. About the book "Mysterious Pages"

Interesting cryptography. About the book "Mysterious Pages"

05.06.2019

Publishing house "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber" continues to delight fans of popular science literature with excellent books. This time - this is a book by Ivan Efishov, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Security "Mystery Pages. Entertaining cryptography».

Don't think this is your usual guide to the basics or history of cryptography, far from it. This is a fascinating book, written in an accessible language and you do not need to understand complex mathematical and cryptographic concepts to understand it. The book is read very easily, and you do not notice that we are talking about complex cryptographic algorithms.

The book contains 30 cryptographic studies devoted to a certain encryption system: nyctography, linear writing, dancing men cipher, double cipher, Kropotkin cipher, Bacon cipher, Euler logotype ...

Also, each study is dedicated to a specific historical event or literary work: Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" and Fibonacci numbers, "The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar" by Yuri Tynyanov and a double digit, Sherlock Holmes and the Cardano lattice, cryptography in Rus', the Mozart family cipher, Egyptian hieroglyphs , cipher of the Decembrists ..

Each etude begins with brief historical information, the general principles of encryption of the chosen method, then the reader is invited to try to decipher the cryptogram himself or unravel the encrypted message with the help of the author.

The book is excellently executed, white pages, high-quality printing, soft cover with flaps. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to stir their brain, expand their horizons. And to everyone who is fond of cryptography and encryption.

The book "Mysterious pages. Entertaining cryptography»

About the book

Cryptography students usually study complex sections of higher algebra and other mathematical sciences, the content of which does not involve any kind of entertainment; solid formulas and abstractions: no romance and secret ciphers. The author picked up such stories about encryption, the solution of which does not require a lot of knowledge in either mathematics or cryptography (the book contains only one simple mathematical formula). The content of the book will...

Read completely

About the book
Interesting sketches about all kinds of ciphers in various areas of life: in linguistics, literature, mathematics, astronomy, politics, music, biology and physics.

The book brought to the attention of the reader is composed of cryptographic studies, the basis for which were small games conducted by the author in a student audience. The main goal of these games is to introduce students to simple ciphers through entertaining stories in an entertaining way, both on historical and literary material.

Cryptography is already indirectly present in children's games. Remember yourself. You probably also had your own secret language from adults that you used in your games.

This book can awaken your and your child's interest in the mysterious pages of literature, science and history, help train attention, observation and logical thinking.

Who is this book for?
This is a book for people interested in cryptography and ciphers.

And for everyone who wants to practice observation and thinking.

about the author
Ivan Efishov - Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Computer Security Department of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (Kaliningrad). Author of more than 70 scientific publications.

Hide

Illuminator Award

Zimin Foundation

"Mystery Pages. Entertaining cryptography»

Ivan Efishov's book "Mysterious Pages. Entertaining Cryptography” is built as a set of studies, each of which analyzes the patterns associated with signs and symbols that help to encode or decode certain messages. This book was included in the 2017 Illuminator Popular Science Literature Awards. Summing up the award will take place on November 16; a list of books and authors shortlisted for the award can be found.

Etude IV Fibonacci Numbers

American writer Dan Brown (b. 1964) used Fibonacci numbers to decode information in his The Da Vinci Code. Let us briefly recall the outline of events associated with these mysterious numbers.

The body of museum curator Jacques Saunière was found in the Louvre building. The deceased is naked and lies in a pose that reproduces the famous drawing by Leonardo da Vinci "The Vitruvian Man". There is an encrypted bloody inscription on the body: Saunière, in the last minutes of his life, "used his own blood as ink or paint, and his own naked stomach as a canvas." The inscription was as follows:

13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5
Looks like an idol relative!
O mine of evil!

What is a mine of evil? Yes, even a relative of some idol ... As for the numbers - if they are arranged in ascending order (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21), then we will get the first eight numbers of the infinite Fibonacci series. However, let's now give the floor to the protagonist of the novel, Harvard University professor Robert Langdon: “The distorted Fibonacci series is the key. The numbers are a hint as to how the rest of the message should be deciphered. Sauniere deliberately broke the sequence, hinting that the same approach can be applied to the text.

Thus, Jacques Sauniere left a hint that what he wrote was a cryptogram! That is, by rearranging the letters in the message, we get a different meaning of the note. The first line of the note with distortions (after all, the Fibonacci series is also distorted) gives "Liodardo da Vinci!", The second is decoded as "Mona Lisa!". The meaning of the note is now more or less clear: it was left by the curator of the Louvre, where the famous painting is kept:

"Leonardo da Vinci! Mona Lisa!

Pointing to the famous painting made it possible to find the golden key to the safe of the Swiss depositary bank. In addition, the Fibonacci numbers also turned out to be the access code to this safe.

But why did Jacques Saunière choose Fibonacci numbers for the access code? Here is how Dan Brown himself explains it in the pages of the novel: “If you turn the Fibonacci sequence into a simple set of ten numbers, it becomes almost unrecognizable. It is easy to remember, and at first glance, the numbers seem to be chosen at random. An ingenious, amazing digital code that Saunière would never forget."

Consider the history of this "brilliant, amazing digital code." Where did these numbers come from?

Coincidence! They were also discovered by Leonardo, and also by an Italian, but, alas, not the famous da Vinci, but a certain merchant Leonardo Fibonacci (1170–1250). In his first mathematical work, "The Book of Abaci" (Liber Abaci, 1202), he considered the problem of rabbit reproduction. As a result, wonderful numbers appeared, later named after Fibonacci:

f 1 = 1, f 2 = 1, f 3 = 2, f 4 = 3, f 5 = 5, f 6 = 8, ... , f 12 = 144, ...

The first two numbers in this sequence are given and equal to one, that is f 1 = 1, f 2 = 1, and each subsequent number is equal to the sum of the two previous numbers. For example, f 6 = f 5 + f 4 (or 8 = 5 + 3). The account can be continued. So, for example, the twelfth Fibonacci number is f 12 = 144.

Fibonacci numbers can describe both the sunflower basket and the location of the spiral arms of the Galaxy.

It should be noted that in his work Leonardo Fibonacci, who repeatedly found himself in Arab Algeria on trade matters, considered the Arabic number system for the first time in European mathematics. The decimal positional system familiar to us, which we all study at school, at one time became the biggest breakthrough in mathematics. Without it, we would still have to use Roman notation, which is so inconvenient in calculations.

Let's smoothly move on to another task of encoding and transmitting information, where the ubiquitous Fibonacci numbers also arise. But let's preface it with a small double linear crossword puzzle.

According to the top row of drawings, the crossword puzzle is solved as follows: “park, window, juice”, along the bottom row - “steam, cook, sock”.

As you can see, the message "parknosok" can be read in two ways. In this case, the information, consisting of eleven letters, you easily deciphered using picture prompts. But the cryptanalyst usually has no clues.

Consider a similar task related to the transmission of information, also consisting of eleven characters, but not accompanied by additional prompts.

Here is her condition. Some alphabet consists of six letters, which for transmission by telegraph are encoded with one or two characters as follows:

, -, , - -, -, - .

When transmitting a certain word, no gaps were made to separate the letter from the letter, so that a continuous chain of dots and dashes was obtained, consisting of eleven characters.

In how many ways can the given word be read?

Let's make the task more clear. Suppose you are given the following word:

- - - - - -

Try to deal with this particular case first.

The task is completely similar to the one that you solved in a linear crossword puzzle. But there you separated words from each other, and here you have to separate the encoded letters in the word. It is known that when transmitting telegrams or radiograms, Morse code is used, in which, for example, the letter A is always encoded with two characters -, while the letter E is one dot, and the letter T is just a dash -. Thus, given a message of two characters - (in which a space is deliberately omitted), you can decode it either as the letter A or as two letters ET.

Now try a similar approach for an eleven-character word. Don't forget that our study is called "Fibonacci Numbers"!

Try to do it yourself, spend an hour, two, three hours on the task ... As long as you need. But don't get ahead of yourself just to read the answer. The task is not so difficult: you won't have to use any mathematical formula to solve it!

Hint: The answer to the problem is the twelfth Fibonacci number.

Let's solve this problem in detail - step by step. So, a word of eleven characters has already been set. Suppose that we are first given a sequence of 1 character, then of 2, 3, ..., 11 characters. Each character, as you remember, is either a dot or a dash.

First step. First, we have a word with a length of one character: *, where * denotes either a dot or a dash.

Obviously, the word is read in a unique way. When a specific message from one character is in front of your eyes, then you will see either or -.

Second step. Now a word with a length of two characters is given: **.

(*)(*), (**) - two ways of decoding. There are simply no other combinations. Here, parentheses indicate individual letters (single-valued or double-valued) in the word we received.

Third step. We have a word with a length of three characters: ***.

(*)(*)(*), (*)(**), (**)(*) - already three ways of decoding (we will arrange a sequence of letters in the lexico-graphic order of their length - first we will try to write out words, which begin with letters of the shortest length, that is, consisting of a single character (*), and words containing letters of double characters (**), we will try to write out after the first. In other words, the word (*)(*)(* *) will be written before the word (*)(**)(*), since the first word has more single characters on the left than the second). As we remember, a letter of three characters (***) does not exist according to the condition of our problem.

Fourth step. We have a word four characters long: ****.

(*)(*)(*)(*), (*)(*)(**), (*)(**)(*), (**)(*)(*), (**) (**) - such a surprise! We now have not four, as one might expect, but as many as five decoding methods.

Fifth step. We have a five-character word: *****.

(*)(*)(*)(*)(*), (*)(*)(*)(**), (*)(*)(**)(*), (*)(** )(*)(*), (**)(*)(*)(*), (*)(**)(**), (**)(*)(**), (**) (**)(*) - eight decoding options.

You can continue in the same spirit. But let's try to guess the pattern that arises in the course of solving the problem.

Let us write down the number of decoding methods obtained at each of our steps.

First step - 1 way.

The second step - 2 ways.

The third step - 3 ways.

The fourth step - 5 ways.

Fifth step - 8 ways.

Now you can clearly see that we have Fibonacci numbers on the right: f 2 = 1, f 3 = 2, f 4 = 3, f 5 = 5, f 6 = 8, ... Since when solving the problem at the first step, we got the second Fibonacci number f 2 = 1, in the second step - the third number f 3 \u003d 2, then, therefore, the correct answer is the twelfth Fibonacci number f 12 = 144, since the resulting word consists of eleven characters.

What an elegant and beautiful task! And quite capable of anyone. I hope you had a lot of fun with her independent decision and did not peep in response.

Read more:
Efishov, Ivan Ivanovich. Mysterious Pages. Entertaining cryptography / Ivan Efishov. - M.: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2016. - 240 p.

Mysterious Pages. Entertaining cryptography Ivan Efishov

(No ratings yet)

Title: Mysterious Pages. Entertaining cryptography

About the book "Mysterious Pages. Entertaining cryptography" Ivan Efishov

If you like to solve graphic riddles and symbols, then you will be very interested in reading the book “Mysterious Pages. Entertaining cryptography”, written by Ivan Efishov. Here the author gives us a fascinating excursion into the historical world of cryptography. We will also be able to learn many interesting stories about deciphering.

Ivan Efishov, Ph.D. of the Department of Computer Security at the Institute of Applied Mathematics and Information Technology, gives us examples of all kinds of ciphers that are used in various fields of life, art and science. The author, in the form of an exciting game, presents us with cryptographic studies that we can solve on our own without any complex knowledge of mathematical sciences. The main goal of the author in writing this edition was to introduce students to simple numbers through fascinating stories based on literary and historical material.

In this edition there are many fascinating stories with interesting puzzles, as well as answers to them. Fans of Sherlock Holmes will be interested in analyzing the story of the dancing man, to whom an entire chapter is devoted. We read this bloody story without thinking about how the translators had to sweat over these works. After all, little men are a kind of symbols that were left in various places. Only when Holmes collected all the symbols did he find the answer to the logical riddle, thereby causing bewilderment among the criminals. By reading the works, you can understand the basic meaning of unraveling such mysteries.

Since the cryptography student program does not provide entertaining methods for teaching complex formulas and abstractions, Ivan Efishov decided to use the original game style with the help of interesting stories about encryption and cryptography. For children, this publication will be useful because the information described in it will help develop an interest in the mysterious texts hidden on the pages of literary, historical and scientific works. They will also be able to train their attention, logic and observation. Despite the fact that the author offers us educational material, this book will be of interest to adults who want to test their erudition and logic.

The book "Mysterious pages. Entertaining Cryptography” is written in an easy and exciting language, so it is easy to read. The text is composed very competently, the information is given gradually from simple to complex, so there is practically no transition to a higher level of complexity.

On our website about books, you can download and read the book online for free by Ivan Efishov “Mysterious Pages. Entertaining cryptography” in epub, fb2, txt, rtf formats. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.

Download for free the book “Mysterious Pages. Entertaining cryptography" Ivan Efishov

(Fragment)

In the format fb2: Download
In the format rtf: Download
In the format epub: Download
In the format txt:

About the book
Interesting sketches about all kinds of ciphers in various areas of life: in linguistics, literature, mathematics, astronomy, politics, music, biology and physics.

Cryptography is already indirectly present in children's games. Remember yourself. You probably also had your own secret language from adults that you used in your games.

This book can awaken your and your child's interest in the mysterious pages of literature, science and history, help train attention, observation and logical thinking.

Who is this book for?
This is a book for people interested in cryptography and ciphers.
And for everyone who wants to practice observation and thinking.

about the author
Ivan Efishov - Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Computer Security Department of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (Kaliningrad). Author of more than 70 scientific publications.

Quotes from the book

The language of flowers
The language of flowers (fluorography) came from the refined East, where it was used to express feelings when they could not be said openly. The red poppy meant pleasure; pale yellow daffodil - humility. The flowers themselves did not hide the text of the message. But bouquets of flowers are another matter.

Mysterious India
India was the only country where a verbal numbering system was in use. Numbers and numbers are replaced by words. To be well versed in verbal numbers, you need to know Indian literature, religion, music. So, 39 words were used to designate the unit.

superstitious scribe
Secret writing was also widely used in Rus'. The scribes of ancient texts (usually monks) usually encrypted their name at the end of the manuscript. Perhaps to hide from the evil eye. One of the types of cryptography was called "wise litorea": the letter was replaced by the number corresponding to it.

Mystery of the cipher
In cryptography, it is always very important to assess the strength of the encryption system, including so that the secrecy of diplomatic correspondence remains inviolable. After all, if you come across some kind of cipher and you quickly opened it, it is quite clear that it is not safe to use the cipher.

Music signature
The German composer Robert Schumann in the collection of pieces for piano "Carnival" encrypted his author's monogram, presenting it in the form of the musical theme S.C.H.A. Where did these letters come from and how can one musically beat them (in musical notation) in a sparkling carnival?

Math game
Agatha Christie recalled that through the game, her father instilled in her a love for "number puzzles and everything related to numbers." The father of the future writer was a cricket referee for several years. Agatha from the age of 6 helped him with calculations: how many wickets were missed, how many runs the team made.