Digital Fortress

Wow, where to begin. This is the second Dan Brown book I've read and I'm guessing it'll likely be the last. To begin, if you plan on reading this book, forget suspending your disbelief, rather tie up your disbelief, take it out back and shoot it lest it resurface while you're reading the book. Yes, this book contains an impressive amount of plot holes, factual errors, non-existent technology,...more

Wow, where to begin. This is the second Dan Brown book I've read and I'm guessing it'll likely be the last. To begin, if you plan on reading this book, forget suspending your disbelief, rather tie up your disbelief, take it out back and shoot it lest it resurface while you're reading the book. Yes, this book contains an impressive amount of plot holes, factual errors, non-existent technology, etc. The NSA (which is in fact bigger than the CIA and the FBI) is portrayed as an organization that has no more than perhaps 20 employees, none of which come in on weekends. 170 IQ employees that act as if they had a 70 IQ. 12 gauge printer cable? The NSA has full-time employees that work as translators -- they don't get temp college professors to read Chinese/Japanese. Programmers/Mathematicians DO NOT MAKE an exorbitant amount of money working for the NSA. They are still subject to the federal payscale. X-eleven, not 'X11'? Brute force code-breaking as the primary decryption method????? VSLI, not VLSI??? Tracer programs that don't have to be executed, but act on their own? Ugh. I can overlook these things if it were well written around a taut storyline. Dan Brown doesn't include a preface to the book that espoused the accuracy of the facts as he does in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. So you have to take it as FICTION and not non-fiction. He does say that he corresponded with former NSA employees in writing this book. Having a bit of experience in the industry, I'd say that either Dan Brown had no such correspondences with former employees, they fed him misinformation deliberately, or Dan Brown was told the basis of his entire book made no sense by these former employees, so he decided to throw all their suggestions in the trash so he could write this book. Regardless, the ultimate downfall of this book is BAD WRITING. The characters are flat and annoying. Their actions are contradictory to their personalities -- just to move the 'plot' along. I think Dan Brown has a Word-a-Day calendar and he uses that new vocabulary word several times in the 10-15 pages of writing he produces that day. Words like 'torrent', 'andalusian', etc are used several times in a 3 'chapter' span and then never again throughout the book. Most annoying, Dan Brown apparently never learned that similes are well and good and get the point across, but should not be used often as they are extremely annoying. Towards the end of the book all these sentences are used in 2 pages -- no joke. "The commander rose through the trap door LIKE Lazarus back from the dead." "Freon was flowing downward through the smoldering TRANSLTR LIKE oxygenated blood." "Susan was standing before him, damp and tousled, in his blazer. She looked LIKE a freshman coed who'd been caught in the rain. He felt LIKE the senior who'd lent her his varsity sweater." [nice double simile, huh? :)] "Her gaze was LIKE ice -- the softness was gone. Susan Fletcher stood rigid LIKE an immovable statue." [another one] "The puddle of blood beneath Hale's body had spread across the carpet LIKE an oil spill." Yes, the writing is THAT groan-inducingly bad. These two classics in the book make me laugh every time I think of them --"Like in a cheap hollywood movie, the lights went out in the bathroom just as she heard the scream." and "Any more interesting than last night and I'll never walk again." Ultimately, I did finish the book -- one reason I gave it 2 stars instead of one. Partly because I hate leaving a book half read, but more so to see how much more amusing it would become to me. There's a good premise in the book, but a better writer was needed to coax it out. Dan Brown is not that writer.   hide

Dan Brown’s book “Digital Fortress “ is…. an interesting book… but I did not enjoy it as much as I did the “The Da Vinci Code” Reading into the first few paragraphs of the book I could tell that it uses the same formula and writing style as all the other novels – fast paced, a lot of facts weaved into the story which spans only a few days with...more

Dan Brown’s book “Digital Fortress “ is…. an interesting book… but I did not enjoy it as much as I did the “The Da Vinci Code” Reading into the first few paragraphs of the book I could tell that it uses the same formula and writing style as all the other novels – fast paced, a lot of facts weaved into the story which spans only a few days with the first chapter starting with a mysterious phone call and someone being whisked away to a ‘mission’ (but then again I guess Dan Brown tested the formula with this book, this was the first novel of the series I think, it just so happens that I’ve read the others first, and thus became my point of comparison) – and so the adventure begins... The story revolves around two central characters in two different settings and their fight to save the National Security Agency’s great decoding supercomputer against an unbreakable code that if released would cripple U.S. Intelligence. Susan Fletcher head cryptographer is called to the NSA HQ on a weekend faced with the problem of an unbreakable code called ‘Digital Fortress’ which is created by an ex-NSA employee, who is found dead in Seville Spain where her fiancé David Becker - a professor of Linguistics is sent to retrieve anything that might contain the passkey – which we are lead to believe was a ring he was wearing at the time of death. ... all that techno babble piqued my curiosity and I had the fleeting urge to go surf the net and research all about the NSA, code-breaking and algorithms etc... but... um.... I got lazy.... => David’s adventure or should I say misadventures in Spain was a lot to handle. Too many unfortunate and unbelievable coincidences if you ask me!!!... there are times while reading that I wanted to skip chapters just to see if he finally got the da*n ring!!! What got me though the book (I tried to read it quickly!) was the anticipation of what will happen in the end… and unfortunately even that was not good!!! There was much hype and build up in the last chapters only to find out that it had a ‘bland’ ending!... even the ring which was the caused a series of unfortunate events and numerous murders wasn’t even part of solving the passkey!!! What started out to be very a good read turned boring by the middle part and bland at the end… boohoo…. Dan Brown fans are sure to kill me now!!!    hide

The National Security Agency has been working for years on a method to intercept and crack any code or encrypted message sent via E-Mail across the globe. They finally developed a machine so powerful that it can decode even the toughest messages in just a matter of minutes. The machine is dubbed TRANSLTR.The existence of TRANSLTR is threatened when a bitter, crippled Japanese programmer...more

The National Security Agency has been working for years on a method to intercept and crack any code or encrypted message sent via E-Mail across the globe. They finally developed a machine so powerful that it can decode even the toughest messages in just a matter of minutes. The machine is dubbed TRANSLTR.The existence of TRANSLTR is threatened when a bitter, crippled Japanese programmer threatens to release an encryption method that TRANSLTR can’t crack: Digital Fortress. Digital Fortress is placed up on the web, encrypted in itself so that only those with the passcode can unlock it. The NSA learns the programmer is working with a partner as a safety measure. If he should die, the partner will publish the passcode within 24 hours.The programmer is found dead in Spain and the NSA must race the clock to obtain both passcodes before it is too late.The whole idea that keeping Digital Fortress out of the hands of the public was a life or death situation seemed a little too weighty for me. I believe the basic idea of Digital Fortress is that the encryption was constantly revolving, making it impossible for a computer to guess when the correct passcode had been entered. Anyone in the computer world knows that everything has a workaround. It may be that Digital Fortress would make TRANSLTR extinct, but necessity is the mother of invention and people would eventually figure out how to break into a file encrypted by Digital Fortress.Therefore, the book seemed a little bloody to me. People were taking the issue WAY too seriously.If you put the absurdity of the subject matter aside, I still enjoyed the book. I’m really starting to like Dan Brown’s work. I’ve also read the Da Vinci Code and both books are filled with information you may not have previously known (such as where the term “sincerely” really comes from). They were also both written in real-time. I absolutely love books written in real-time. No skipping ahead three months and losing a portion of the person’s life. No thought or detail left unattended.It was a good, dark read that I really enjoyed. I can’t wait to delve into some of Dan Brown’s other works.   hide

This is without doubt the worst book I have ever read. Leaving aside Dan Brown's writing style, which does not in the least appeal to me, the plot is fundamentally flawed at many levels. The story mainly revolves around the NSA running some code on their new quantum computer which then proceeds to break it. Brown clearly hasn't researched any of the subject matter in the book, and it really...more

This is without doubt the worst book I have ever read. Leaving aside Dan Brown's writing style, which does not in the least appeal to me, the plot is fundamentally flawed at many levels. The story mainly revolves around the NSA running some code on their new quantum computer which then proceeds to break it. Brown clearly hasn't researched any of the subject matter in the book, and it really shows. Here are a few representative plot holes: 1) The code changes with time: This is a really ridiculous thing to claim. It can only change with time when someone is running a computer program that changes it with time. Stop running the damn program, and work off whatever the source is! It's that simple. 2) The NSA try to decrypt a code, but it turns out to be a program and breaks their computer: This is just plain stupid. How did they accidently run a program, when what they meant to do was use the binary as input into another program? If their decryption program cannot deal with all possible inputs then it doesn't work, and never did. I suspect that at the NSA they regularly click on attached executable files from people they don't know that turn up in their Outlook Express inbox. 3) He confuses hacking with cryptanalysis over and over again. 4) Apparently the quantum computer they have can break all cryptosystems. Unfortunately, there are some (really really simple) systems which are provably secure in the informational theoretic sense, and can never be broken, simply because they do not contain enough information to reconstruct the message without the key. 5) Since when do we have giant quantum computers in the basement? It's all just a little off the wall, and Brown's misuse of jargon, and his poor grasp of the subject matter is torturous. Seriously, give this one a miss!   hide