Digital Fortress January 9, 2006
Posted by Phillip in : geek , trackbackSo, against the advice of Darrell, I grabbed my copy of Digital Fortress off my bookshelf last week. I have been desperate for some more of Dan Brown’s writing after finishing The DaVinci Code and Angles & Demons. What can I say? He is a great writer. I just wish I had not read this one.
This book is probably a great read for anyone who knows absolutely nothing about computers, heck it’s probably a good read for people who know enough about computers to be “dangerous”. But it’s not a good read if your life’s work is computer technology.
The conecpt of the book is kinda neat. The NSA crytographers are trying to break an unbreakable code called “Digital Fortress”. In true Dan Brown fashion, the entire book takes place in the course of about 24-36 hours in two geographically separate locations. The NSA folks chill out at NSA headquarters in an office, which the name alone should indicate that it was “made up”, called Node 3, and a college professor bumps around in Spain trying to save the world. (If you haven’t yet noticed, Dan Brown seems to like to make college professors his “heros”. Why is this? Well… my guess is that he lives vicariously through his characters, but that is a discussion for another post!)
I don’t want to give too much of the book away, but I will simply state that reading the other Dan Brown books has allowed me to quickly ascertain who the “bad guy(s)” are in his novels. This kinda stinks because I am worried that when I read The Solomon Key, I will not enjoy it as much. Suffice to say, I had the bad dude picked out before I had read 50 pages.
So back to the plot, this unbreakable code is being used by its author to hold the NSA for ransom until they reveal that they have a monster code-breaking machine. Keep in mind that there is a lot of technical babble in this book that is just crazy wrong. For example, Dan Brown repeatedly sites something called the “Bergofsky Priciple” that, according to him, indicates that because of brute force attacks, no codes are unbreakable. Take a minute and Google with me. Did you see it too? That’s right, Dan Brown seemed to pull that one out of thin air, which is ok, it is fiction! My real problems come into play when they start describing a monster computer with three million titanium processors. Wow, can I get one of these? I bet it doesn’t run Windows… but if it did, that would be one hell of a solitare game.
It goes on, near the end, after the first machine blows up because it was processessing too much (hi Navision!), there is an attack on the NSAs giant databank and a virus starts attacking the firewalls. This is where it really get’s crazy, according to the author all of the NSAs firewalls are software based and live directly in the databank. Did you know that X-eleven (X11) is a method of keeping people out of your data? Well, if you know anything about system security, just don’t read this part of the book. So we get down to the end and there is no time to shut down the system and the hackers are starting to infiltrate. OMG WTF WHAT DO WE DO!!!#@$@#$. IT TAKES 30 MINUTES TO SHUT DOWN TEH SYSTEM!!!!!
Hey, I’m no guru, but if hackers are starting to get in, and your firewalls are failing and you don’t have time to do a safe shutdown how about UNPLUGGING THE FREAKIN INTERNET! That’s right, see that little cable in the back of your computer that looks sorta like a phone cable, just pull that out. You now have the most secure computer in the world.
So, I am willing to concede that disconnecting a master data cluster from teh intarweb is not as easy as unplugging a CAT5 cable from the back of a server, but seriously, you don’t need a CCIE to re-route incoming internet traffic and null route all incoming until your X-windows firewalls are back up. Now why the fat dude incharge of systems administration at the NSA (called Jabba) couldn’t figure that out is one of the mysteries of the world.
So it wasn’t all bad, if you are able to ignore the massive issues with anything technical, you will probably enjoy the book. It’s not a bad read if you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to technology. Although, I did find it ironic when I saw the price tag on the back of the book. Apparently my dad picked this one up for $1.99, on clearance.
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Hate to say I told you so, but…