Цитаты из книги The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet

To kill any possible sub rosa message, censors sometimes paraphrased messages. This practice gave rise to Censorship’s classic tale, which dates back to World War I. Onto the desk of a censor was placed the cablegram Father is dead. The censor considered it briefly, changed it to Father is deceased, and forwarded it. Soon…

To plug up as many steganographic channels of communication as possible, the Office of Censorship banned in advance the sending of whole classes of objects or kinds of messages. International chess games by mail were stopped. Crossword puzzles were extracted from letters, for the examiners did not have time to solve them…

Practical cryptanalysis has even been acknowledged at the highest level. The source is none other than Nikita Sergeyevitch Khrushchev. While sightseeing in Los Angeles with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge during his 1959 visit to the United States, the Soviet Premier boasted that he had seen a message that…

One of the tasks of the secret police is to protect the dictatorship of the proletariat from the proletarians who are unhappy with the dictators.

Then slowly the Russian Command got worried. Wireless calls became frantic. “Report at once where the enemy comes from. Your message is unbelievable.” Reply: “Ask the Devil’s grandmother; how should I know where the enemy comes from?” (Whenever the Devil and his near relations are mentioned in Russian signals one can…

An expanded version of the Magia naturalis, in 20 books, recorded many of the experiments of the Otiosi and, as popular as the original, was translated and was reprinted no fewer than 27 times. Called the “most delightful and browsable of scientific books,” it includes such oddities as ways of making merry by turning…

The dreaded change of code, which would have cost the United States her best source of information just as it was needed more and more, now seemed inevitable. But morning after morning, the messages bore the same aspect and continued to break down under the same treatment. After days of anxious waiting, Navy cryptanalysts…