3 Encryption
In this chapter
- How to use encryption to hide sensitive data on a public channel
- How to encrypt information in transit and at rest
- How to tell web servers and browsers to make secure connections
- How to use encryption to detect changes in data
The Copiale cipher is a manuscript containing 105 pages of text handwritten in secret code, bound in gold-and-brocade paper, and thought to date back to 1760. For many years, the origin of the text remained a mystery; it was discovered by personnel at the East Berlin Academy after the end of the Cold War and remained undecipherable for more than 260 years.
In 2011, a team of engineers and scientists from the University of Southern California and the University of Sweden finally decoded its meaning. The text, it turned out, described the rites of an underground society of opticians who called themselves the Oculists. Banned by Pope Clement XII, these secretive ophthalmologists were led by a German count, and the text itself describes their initiation ceremony. New initiates to the society were invited to read the words on a blank piece of paper; then, when they were unable to do so, they would have a single eyebrow hair plucked and be asked to repeat the process. Nobody knows quite why these mysterious opticians went to such lengths to hide their activities. Perhaps the papal edicts had declared LensCrafters to be a tool of the devil.