Gersham Whelock is on his way. As a prodigy MIT graduate recruited by the top software companies in the world, he lands his dream job with prIsm software (a secret arm of the government) and develops an encryption system (called Hidden) that is so sophisticated, CIA, FBI and the worlds best hackers find it unbreakable.
Watching prIsm's profits soar, making several executives multi-millionaires, Gersham's cubicle seems hardly the thanks he feels he deserves.
The day the software is officially released and activated at worldwide security firms, banks and government agencies, Gersham is found dead. And to the surprise of prIsm, the DE-cryption segment of the software is found to be incomplete, preventing all the information encrypted with Hidden to be locked and never accessed again.
For the next 3 months, prIsm executives watch their company (and governments) scramble to find anyone who can crack the code and allow the software to release the locks. Giant rewards, now reaching three to five hundred million dollars are offered to anyone who can crack it.
Enter Cyrus Fayrbanke, a first year CIA operative awaiting his first assignment. While researching the internet news feeds for the major case division, he follows the story of Hidden and maintains a notebook of the attempts, clues and progress of the drive to crack it.
Sitting by himself, on a cool Virginia morning, as he does each lunch hour, he watches the sunlight filter through the art installation in the CIA campus courtyard as it creates strange shapes and figures on his notebook page. The sunlight is pouring through sculptures thousands of cutout letters and symbols and as he walks around with the notebook, and the angle of the sun changes, sentences are formed. The instructions for decrypting "Hidden"
One year later while moving into his newly built Hawiian beach house, he browses through a box of MIT textbooks and finds a first year Greek workbook.
The first exercise on the page..."What is the Greek for 'Hidden'?" the answer? "Kryptos"
Gersham slowly falls asleep in his hammock.
Review of Decryption by Reviewer #2 (Scarpacci)
Decryption is an amazingly vibrant story of complexity in the hands of a simple cyber-forensic treasure hunter. Is there a twist? How many secrets are hidden in the code? Do we know the characters through their lives, their dreams, or their minds? This is a spellbinder for conspiracy theorists, hackers, and cryptography zealots. I can't wait to read more.
4 comments:
Using the decryption scheme based on sunlight pouring through the chiseled out letters at the CIA campus, I deduce this tidbit...Cyrus Fayrbanke's real name is Postulo Hippsosqueezer. Then, the rest is jibberish. I'm gonna apply the Heimlich perturbation to the remaining vowels and do a switcheroo on the consonants.
I'm following the 500 mill.
Explosions. There have to be nicely placed and timely explosions.
Or, Fay Burbank in a notso Shenikaist modern way.
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