Digital Fortress

Digital Fortress
First edition cover
Author(s)	Dan Brown
Country	United States United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction Techno-thriller
Publisher	St. Martin's Press Transworld (United Kingdom)
Publication date	1998
Media type	Print (hardback, paperback ((audiobook)
ISBN	ISBN 031218087X (first edition hardcover)
OCLC Number	55045760
Followed by	Angels & Demons

Digital Fortress is a techno-thriller novel written by American author Dan Brown and published in 1998 by St. Martin's Press. The book explores the theme of government surveillance of electronically stored information on the private lives of citizens, and the possible civil liberties and ethical implications using such technology.

Synopsis

When the United States National Security Agency's code-breaking machine (TRANSLTR) encounters a new and complex code—Digital Fortress—that it cannot break, Commander Trevor Strathmore calls in Susan Fletcher, their head cryptographer to crack it. She discovers that it was written by Ensei Tankado, a former NSA employee who became displeased with the NSA's intrusion into people's private lives. Tankado intends to auction the code's algorithm on his website and have his partner, "NDAKOTA", release it for free if he dies. Essentially holding the NSA hostage, the agency is determined to stop Digital Fortress from becoming a threat to national security.

When Tankado does indeed die in Seville, of what appears to be a heart attack, Strathmore asks David Becker (Susan's fiancé) to travel to Seville and recover a ring that Tankado was wearing when he died. The ring is suspected to have the code that unlocks Digital Fortress. However, Becker soon discovers that Tankado gave the ring away immediately before his death. Each person he questions in the search for the ring is murdered by Hulohot, a mysterious assassin.

Meanwhile, telephone calls between "North Dakota" and Numataka (chairman of a large computer company in Tokyo) reveal that North Dakota hired Hulohot to kill Tankado in order to gain access to the passcode on his ring and speed up the release of the algorithm. At the NSA, Fletcher's investigation leads her to believe that Greg Hale, a fellow NSA employee, is North Dakota. Phil Chartrukian, an NSA technician who is unaware of the Digital Fortress code breaking failure and believes Digital Fortress to be a virus, conducts his own investigation into whether Strathmore allowed Digital Fortress to bypass Gauntlet (NSA's virus/worm filter). However, Chartrukian is murdered in the sub-levels of TRANSLTR by an unknown assailant. Since Hale and Strathmore were both in the sub-levels, Fletcher assumes that Hale is the killer; however, Hale claims that he witnessed Strathmore killing Chartrukian. Chartrukian's death by falling off a balcony also damages TRANSLTR's cooling system.

Hale holds Fletcher and Strathmore hostage to prevent himself from being arrested for the murder. It is then that Hale explains that the e-mail he supposedly "received" from Tankado was actually in his inbox because he was snooping on Strathmore, who was also watching Tankado's e-mail account. After the encounter, Hale's name is cleared when Fletcher discovers through a tracer that North Dakota and Ensei Tankado are actually the same person, as "NDAKOTA" is an anagram of "Tankado". Strathmore's role as the primary antagonist is revealed when Strathmore fatally shoots Hale, and arranges it to appear as a suicide. Susan later discovers through Strathmore's pager that he is the one who hired Hulohot. Becker later kills Hulohot in a violent confrontation.

Chapters told from Strathmore's perspective reveal his motives. By hiring Hulohot to kill Tankado, having Becker recover his ring, and having Hulohot kill him, would help facilitate a romantic relationship with Fletcher, regaining his lost honor, and enable him to unlock Digital Fortress. By making phone calls to Numataka impersonating as "North Dakota", he thought he could partner with Numataka Corporation to make a Digital Fortress chip equipped with his own backdoor Trojan so that the NSA can spy on every computer equipped with these chips. However, Strathmore didn't know that Digital Fortress is actually a computer worm once unlocked, "eating away" at the NSA databank's security and allowing "any third-grader with a modem" to look at government secrets. When TRANSLTR overheats, Strathmore commits suicide by standing next to the machine as it explodes. The worm eventually gets into the database, but soon after Fletcher figures out the password, and is able to terminate the worm before hackers can get any data. The NSA allows Becker to return to the United States, reuniting him with Fletcher. At last it is revealed that Numataka is Ensei Tankado's father. Numataka left Tankado the day he was born since Tankado was a deformed child.

Characters

• Susan Fletcher — The NSA's Head Cryptographer, and the story's lead character
• David Becker — A university professor on languages and the fiancé of Susan Fletcher
• Ensei Tankado Numataka — A disgruntled former NSA employee
• Commander Trevor Strathmore — NSA Deputy Director of Operations and the tragic hero
• Phil Chartrukian — Sys-Sec Technician
• Greg Hale — NSA Cryptogropher
• Leland Fontaine — Director of NSA
• "Hulohot" — An assassin hired by Strathmore and sent to Spain and the secondary antagonist
• Midge Milken — Fontaine's internal security analyst
• Chad Brinkerhoff — Fontaine's personal assistant
• "Jabba" — NSA's senior System Security Officer
• Tokugen Numataka — Tankado's father who made deal with Strathmore and the main antagonist

Real life scenarios

The book is loosely based around recent history of cryptography. In 1976 the Data Encryption Standard (DES) was approved with a 56-bit key rather than the 64-bit key originally proposed. It was widely believed that the National Security Agency had pushed through this reduction in security on the assumption that it could crack codes before anyone else.^[1]

In fact the DES was first publicly broken in 1997, 96 days after the first of the DES Challenges.^[2] In 1998, the same year as Digital Fortress was published, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (featured in the book) built a piece of hardware costing less than $250,000 called the EFF DES cracker which broke it in 56 hours and by 1999 the record was under 24 hours.^[3]

The brute force search used by TRANSLTR takes twice as long for each extra bit added to the key (if this is done sensibly), so the reaction of the industry has understandably been to lengthen the key. The Advanced Encryption Standard established in 2001 uses 128, 192 or 256 bits, which take at least 10²¹ times as long (i.e. 2⁷⁰) to solve by this technique.^[4]

Unbreakable codes are not new to the industry. The one-time pad, invented in 1917 and used for the cold-war era Moscow-Washington hotline, was proved to be unconditionally secure by Claude Shannon in 1949 when properly implemented.^[5] However it is inconvenient to use in practice and is limited mainly to military and governments.^[6]

Foreign language editions

The following is a list of foreign language editions of the novel. This is not a list of foreign language Wikipedias with an article on the novel, but merely editions in which the novel was printed. Those that are listed here are linked to the article on the novel on that language's Wikipedia. Foreign language Wikipedias that feature an article on the novel but in which an edition of the novel was not printed are not listed here, but in the sidebar to the left of the article.

Editions that feature the title "Digital Fortress" on the cover in both English and in that foreign language indicate this in parenthesis.

• Fortaleza Digital - Brazil^[7]
• Цифрова крепост - Bulgarian^[7]
• Tankados Kode - Danish^[8][9]
• Het Juvenalis Dilemma – Dutch^[7][10]
• 數位密碼 (Digital Fortress) - Chinese^[7]
• Digitaalne kindlus - Estonian^[11]
• Diabolus - German^[7]
• שם הצופן: מבצר דיגיטלי - Hebrew]^[7]
• Digitális erőd – Hungarian^[12]
• 디지털 포트리스 - Korean^[7]
• Ciparu cietoksnis - Latvian^[13]
• Cyfrowa twierdza - Polish^[7]
• Fortaleza Digital - Portugal^[7]
• Fortăreaţa digitală - Romanian^[7]
• Цифровая крепость - Russia^[14]
• Дигитална тврђава - Serbian^[7]
• Digitálna pevnosť - Slovak^[7][15]
• Digitalna Trdnjava - Slovene^[7]
• La fortaleza digital - Spanish^[7]
• Gåtornas palats - Swedish^[7]
• ล่ารหัสมรณะ (Digital Fortress) - Thai^[7]

References

1. ^ "Has the DES been broken?". RSA Labs. http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2227. 
2. ^ "Distributed net". http://www.distributed.net/history.php. Retrieved 2010-06-18. 
3. ^ "Record set in cracking 56-bit crypto". CNet. http://news.cnet.com/Record-set-in-cracking-56-bit-crypto/2100-1017_3-220333.html. Retrieved 2010-06-18. 
4. ^ Schwartz, John (2000-10-03). "TECHNOLOGY; U.S. Selects a New Encryption Technique". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/business/technology-us-selects-a-new-encryption-technique.html. Retrieved 2010-06-18. 
5. ^ Shannon, Claude. (1949). Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems. 28(4). Bell System Technical Journal. p. 656–715. 
6. ^ Gary McGraw, John Viega. "Software security for developers: One-time pads". IBM. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/s-pads.html. Retrieved 2010-11-02. 
7. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Digital Fortress World Editions at Dan Brown’s official site
8. ^ Statsbiblioteket. Department of the Danish National Library. Accessed November 13, 2011
9. ^ Hr. Ferdinand (publisher in Denmark); Accessed November 13, 2011
10. ^ Juvenalis Dilemma at uitgeverijluitingh.nl
11. ^ Digitaalne kindlus at Ester Kallinn E-Katalog]; Accessed October 15, 2010
12. ^ Entry in the database of the Hungarian National Library
13. ^ Ciparu cietoksnis at Jānis Roze, Accessed October 31, 2010
14. ^ "Цифровая крепость" (in Russian). Publishing house “AST”. 8 August 2006. http://www.ast.ru/item/617328/. Retrieved 17 April 2010. 
15. ^ Digitálna pevnosť at Shop.sk; Accessed August 11, 2010

External links

• Dan Brown Official Website
• Dan Brown Official UK Website
• Dan Brown Official Australian Website
• (Spanish) Criticism in the Spanish-language Epoca of the book's description of locations in Seville