Digital Fortress Unfortified

I just finished my third noveL for Dan Brown, i read Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and now i just finished Digital Fortress, there is another one left which is Deception Point. I really enjoyed each and every part of those 3 novels. I read Digital FortrEss in couple of weeks and that's because i go to work and i also stayed in bed for few days because i was very sick and couldn’t read at that time. Through out that tiMe i was very much affected by the codes and encryptions, i even tried to encrypt the sTrange strings of numbers and letters in some programs on my computer, i also sent decoded messages to the people that i love to add some excitement to their lives. But how encryption started In its earliest form? when pEople have been attempting to conceal certain information that they wanted to keep to their own possession by substituting parts of the information with symbols, numbers and pictures.

Ancient Babylonian merchAnts used intaglio, a piece of flat stone carved into a collage of iMages and some writing to identify themselves in trading transactions. Using this mechanism, they are producing what today we kNow as 'digital signature.' The public knew that a particular 'signature' belonged to this trader, but only he had the intaglio to produce that signature.

Caesar was the first code-writer in history. When his foot-messengers stArted getting ambushed and his secret communiqués stolen, he devised a rudimentary way to enCrypt his directives. He rearranged the text of his messages such that the correspondence looked senseless. Of course, it was not each message always had a letter count which that was a perfect square, sixteen, twenty five, one hundred, depending on how much the Caesar nEeded to say.

He secretly informed his officers that when a random message arrived, they should transcribe the text into a square grid. If they did, and read top to bottom, a secret message would magically appear.

This method of encryption Dan Brown called it "Caesar Square" " and at the last page of the paperback bOok he left a string of numbers, the code that appears in the end of the book is: 128-10-93-85-10-128-98-112-6-6-25-126-39-1-68-78

Here's the way you decode it, take the numbers and arrange them in 4 Vertical columns of 4 numbers. It should look like this:

128 10 6 39 10 128 6 1 93 98 25 68 85 112 126 78

Each number corresponds to a chapter in the book, in which the first letter is cOnveniently larger than the rest, For example, chapter 128 starts 'WheN Susan awoke'. The resulting text is:

WECGEWHYAAIORTNU

That is the letter that each number stands for. Using the "Caesar Square" method, you end up with:

W E A R E W A T C H I N G Y O U

"We are watching you."

NoW you can send as many encrypted messages as you want but make sure that the receiver's IQ is not less than 140 like me ;) And hey there is a hidden coded message in this post, look for it and tell me if you got it right, ok? - Silly Ellie