Chapter 2 chapter 2

Baker muttered, "It's called squash." Susan gave him a silly look. "It's like a dense zucchini with green skin," she argued. "It's just a little smaller!" Susan gave him a push. The Georgetown left winger kicked the corner over the baseline, and the crowd booed.The defenders immediately retreated. "What about you?" Baker asked. "Do you like any sports?" "I like judo and am a black belt." Baker hastened to flatter: "I think you are better at sports." Susan laughed. "We're super eugenics in sports, aren't we?"

A good Georgetown defender came up with a great tackle, and the stands immediately roared.Susan leaned over and whispered in David's ear, "Doctor!" David turned his head to look at her, not knowing what was going on. "Doctor!" she cried again, "tell me what comes to mind first." Baker asked suspiciously: "You want to do a word association test?" "It's pure NSA procedure. I need to know who I'm with," she said, looking at him seriously. Susan frowned and said, "Okay, try this - 'Kitchen'." Baker said without thinking, "The bedroom."

Susan shrugged her eyebrows shyly and said, "Okay, how about this one—a cat." "Sausage." Baker responded quickly. "sausage?" "Yeah! Gut." (Note: Susan said "cat", English is cat, Baker said "sausage", English is gut (also means "intestines"), the combination of the two English words is catgut, "Gutgut" (used to make strings, tennis racquets, or suture wounds in surgery.) The string on the squash racquets of the champions." "It's not bad." Susan pouted. "You should test it!" Baker urged.

Susan thought for a moment and said, "You're a boyish, frustrated squash fan." Baker shrugged and said, "It's really not outrageous." Several weeks passed like this.Every night at dinner, Baker would babble her questions about the sweets. Where did she learn math from? How did she get into the NSA? How did she get so attractive? Susan always blushed and said that she matured very late.When she was seventeen or eighteen years old, Susan was still as thin as a telephone pole, and she was still so clumsy in wearing shoes and hats. Susan's aunt once told her that God's compensation for her simplicity was to give her a clever brain.

The compensation came a little too soon, Baker thought. Susan said she had a keen interest in cryptography as early as junior high school.At that time, the president of the school's computer club was a tall eighth-grade guy named Frank Gutman.He printed a love poem for Susan, and the letter was encrypted by replacing numbers.Susan begged him to tell the contents, but he dismissively refused.When Susan returned home, she lay down under the covers, turned on the flashlight, and pondered for a whole night. The secret was finally revealed—each number represented a letter.She deciphered the password carefully, and those seemingly casual numbers magically turned into a beautiful poem, and Susan was stunned.From that moment on, Susan knew she was in love—she was in love with codes and cryptography, and that codes and cryptography were going to be a part of her life.Almost two decades later, after earning a master's degree in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University and studying number theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a full scholarship, Susan submitted her doctoral dissertation, "The Use of Manual Cryptography." methods, procedures and rule systems”.Needless to say, her advisor was not the only reader of the paper, as Susan soon received a call from the NSA and an air ticket from them.

Anyone who understands cryptography knows the NSA, home to the most crypto-minded people on our planet.Every spring, when private enterprises condescendingly patrol among the newly graduated students and offer embarrassing salaries and stock options, the National Security Bureau carefully observes, then locks the target, and finally It is very straightforward to go forward and double the maximum regular salary for them.As long as it is needed, the NSA will stop at nothing.Susan was trembling with excitement, and she flew to Washington's Dulles International Airport full of expectations.The NSA sent a driver to pick her up, and the driver drove her to Fort Meade like lightning.

There were 41 other people who received the same call as Susan that year. Susan, who was 28 years old at the time, was the youngest and only woman among these people.As a result, Susan found that her trip to the NSA was not so much to explain her personal situation, but rather to accept tedious public relations investigations and endless intelligence tests.A week later, only Susan and six others were invited again.Susan hesitated, but went again.Several of them were divided and tried immediately.They each underwent polygraph tests, parentage inquiries, handwriting analysis and an untold number of hours of oral interviews, which included taped interviews about their sexual orientation and experiences.When the interviewer asked Susan if she had sexual contact with animals, Susan almost walked out

, but she still inexplicably passed one difficulty after another—Susan can then devote herself to the profound research of her favorite password theory, enter this mysterious "labyrinth", and become the most secret club in the world—National Security Bureau - a member of the team. Baker sat there, immersed in the legend of Susan.He couldn't help asking: "They actually asked you if you had sexual contact with beasts?" Susan shrugged and said, "This is part of the routine life experience test." "Then..." Baker couldn't help but laugh, "What did you say?"

Susan kicked him under the table and said, "I told them no." Then she added, "But I did until last night, for sure." In Susan's eyes, Baker was almost as flawless as she imagined.There was only one habit of his that irritated her slightly, and that was his insistence on bringing checks with them every time they went out.She didn't want to see him spend his entire day's salary on dinner for the two of them, but Baker was unshakable.Susan also learned not to object, but she always felt bad.I can't spend all the money I earn, she thought, I should pay the bill.

Still, Susan felt that Baker was her ideal mate, although he still had that outdated chivalry about him.Baker was passionate, handsome, funny, and most importantly, he had a keen interest in Susan's work.Whether it was on the way to the Smithsonian, out for a bike ride, or cooking spaghetti in Susan's kitchen, David always had a thirst for knowledge.Always doing her best to answer questions, Susan gave Baker an overview of the NSA's unclassified situation.Everything Susan said completely attracted Baker. The National Security Agency was personally announced by President Truman at 12:01 on November 4, 1952. It has been the most mysterious intelligence agency in the world for more than 50 years.The seven-page working regulations of the National Security Agency succinctly stated its mission: to protect the US communication system and intercept intelligence secrets of other countries.

More than 500 antennas were densely installed on the roof of the main office building of the National Security Agency, and there are also two oversized radome shaped like giant golf balls.The main office building itself was a colossus—at more than two million square feet, it was twice the size of the CIA headquarters.The main building houses more than eight million feet of telephone wire and 80,000 square feet of permanently sealed radio reflectors. Susan also told David about the communications intelligence system, the NSA's Global Reconnaissance Division--the dizzying array of shortwave radios, satellites, and global wiretapping devices that specialize in monitoring.Thousands of official documents and conversations are intercepted and tapped here every day, and these communiqués and conversations are sent to NSA analysts for deciphering.The FBI, the CIA, and the think tanks of the U.S. Foreign Office all depend on intelligence from the NSA. Baker was fascinated, and he asked: "So what is the code breaking? What is it used for?" Susan told him that the intercepted intelligence usually comes from troublesome national governments, hostile factions or terrorist organizations, and many intelligences are sent from the United States.For the sake of secrecy, the information is transmitted in codes to prevent it from falling into the hands of others-the work of intercepting the information is thanks to the Global Reconnaissance Department, which is usually done by them.Susan told David that her job was to study these codes, crack them herself, and provide the NSA with decoding information.Actually not quite so. Susan felt very guilty for lying to her sweetheart, but she couldn't help it.If a few years ago, what she said was correct, but the situation of the National Security Agency has long since changed, and the entire cryptography community has long since changed.Susan's current job is absolutely confidential, even to the highest level of power, she is generally not allowed to disclose. "Crack the code," Baker said ecstatically, "how do you know where to start? I mean...how did you crack the code?" Susan smiled. "Others don't know, but you should know! It's like learning a foreign language. At first the words are messy and meaningless, but after you figure out its structure and rules, you get the meaning." Baker nodded, feeling deeply, but he was still not satisfied.Susan used Moruti napkins and a concert program as a blackboard to give this charming pedant a simple semiotics lesson.She begins with Julius Caesar's "perfect square" cryptex. Caesar, she preached, was the first person in history to write a code.At that time, his messengers on foot were ambushed from time to time, and confidential documents were robbed as a result, so Caesar figured out a preliminary method to encrypt his instructions.He reassembled his files to make them seem meaningless.Of course, it's not really pointless.Each letter has a letter count - it depends on how much Caesar wants to say.He secretly informed his ministers that after receiving an unidentifiable secret letter, he first transcribed the text on a neat coordinate grid, and then read it in order from top to bottom, and a secret letter appeared magically It's in sight. For a period of time, Caesar's idea of ​​recombining the text was being adopted and improved in order to make it more difficult to break.Encryption in the non-computer age reached its zenith during World War II.At that time, the Nazis built an encryption machine that made people completely puzzled. It was called the Hidden King. The original text is Enigma, which means "incomprehensible things or incomprehensible people". Here it is translated as "The Hidden King". The first half is Transliteration, but also expresses the corresponding meaning to a certain extent. .Resembling an old-fashioned typewriter, the machine contained copper interlocking transcoding swivels that rotated in an intricate pattern to scramble clear text into seemingly chaotic groupings of letters.The recipient of the secret document can only crack the password through another hidden king with the same standard and exactly the same method.Baker was fascinated.This time Mr. became a student. One night, during the performance of "Flipped Mouth" in the university, Susan gave David the simplest password for him to crack.David sat there throughout the intermission, brooding over the 11-letter note. HLFKZCVDLDS Finally, just before the lights dimmed at the end of the second half, Baker cracked the code.To make it easier for Baker to decode, Susan simply replaced each letter in the message with the letter that followed it in alphabetical order.Baker simply moves each letter forward one letter in alphabetical order during decoding—A becomes B, B becomes C, and so on.He quickly replaced other letters, never expecting that the little four syllables would make him ecstatic: IMGLADWEMET9 (Note: This sentence means: I am lucky to be with you. The LDSNN below, according to the decryption method set by Susan above, means METOO, each other.) Baker immediately wrote down his answer and handed it to Susan: LDSNN Susan felt extremely relieved. Baker smiled with relief. He is 35 years old, but his heart is still beating violently with excitement.Baker had never been so fascinated by a woman.Suzanne's delicate European features and soft brown eyes often remind Baker of Estée Lauder ads.Susan was tall, thin, and clumsy as a teenager, but she is not what she used to be.Over the years, Susan had grown into a curvaceous, willow-waisted woman—slim, tall, with firm breasts, and an incredibly flat stomach.Baker often joked that she was the first swimsuit model he'd ever met with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics and number theory.As the months passed, both of them found that there seemed to be something between them that could keep each other alive. They had been together for almost two years when David popped the question to her one day, while away for a weekend in the Smoky Mountains.The two were lying on a canopy bed in the stone manor.Baker hadn't prepared the ring—it was all off the tongue.And that's what Susan loved about him—outspokenness.Susan kissed him endlessly while Baker took her in his arms and undressed her. "I take that as a yes," Baker said.In the warmth of the fire, the two stayed together all night, infinitely tender. That magical night was six months ago—just before David's surprise promotion to chair the modern languages ​​department.But since then, the relationship between the two has taken a sharp turn for the worse. The electronic device on the code deciphering department made a short and sharp sound, and Susan woke up from her depressed contemplation.The revolving door has been turned to the maximum opening position, and after a full 360-degree rotation, it will close again within five seconds.Susan cheered up and stepped into the door, and the computer immediately registered her entry. Susan has lived here almost all the time since the code-breaking department was completed three years ago, but she was still amazed when she saw the code-breaking department today.The huge curved main hall soars five stories high, and the transparent dome reaches 120 feet at the central roof. feet high.Underneath the plexiglass dome is a polycarbonate mesh, a large mesh capable of withstanding a two-megaton shock wave.Sunlight is projected through the glass screen from the delicate mesh and shines on the four walls.Motes of dust spiraled upwards in an unexpected spiral — thanks to the dome's powerful ionization dust removal system. The four sloping walls of the hall are in a huge arc shape at the top, and they are almost vertical at the level of sight. When they get close to the floor, the walls are first faintly translucent, and gradually become opaque ink-the whole is black. There was a piece of burnished black tiles with a mysterious sheen, which made people feel uneasy, as if the whole floor was covered with transparent black ice. The most conspicuous thing on the floor is the machine that looks like the top of a huge torpedo. The high dome of this hall is specially built for it.With its base deep into the foundations, the arched, jet-black machine stood 23 feet tall, curved and smooth like a killer whale frozen on a frigid beach. This is TRANSLTR, the most expensive piece of computer equipment unique in the world and unique in the NSA. Like an iceberg, ninety percent of the machine's volume and functions are hidden underground, and its secrets are hidden in a six-story enamel shaft that goes directly into the ground—a labyrinth surrounded by nine winding ileums. The rocket-like shell of the rocket contains complicated aisles, countless cables, exhaust devices for chlorofluorocarbon refrigeration systems, and so on.The power generator at the bottom was always humming with a low-frequency noise, making the people in the Code Deciphering Department feel like they were approaching the gate of the netherworld. Like all great technological inventions, TRANSLTR is a product of practical needs.In the 1980s, the NSA witnessed the telecommunications revolution that revolutionized the intelligence and reconnaissance world—the public's access to the Internet.More specifically, the advent of email. Criminals, terrorists, and spies have long suffered enough from eavesdropping, and are naturally happy to accept this new gadget of global communication.E-mail has the security of traditional means of communication and the speed of a wired telephone.Since the teleporter is via an underground fiber optic line, it is never sent into the airwaves, so it is absolutely immune to hijacking—at least in theory. But in reality, intercepting emails traversing the Internet is child's play, a piece of cake for the NSA's tech minds.The Internet is not as new to home computers as most people think, it was actually designed by the US Department of Defense three decades ago.It was a vast computer network, a secure communication system designed for the government in case of nuclear war.The eyes and ears of the NSA were cyber elites then.People who engage in illegal activities via email quickly learn that their secrets are not as hidden as they think.The FBI, DEA, Internal Revenue Service, and other law-enforcement agencies of the United States -- plus the cunning hacker operatives of the NSA -- reveled in the thrill of numerous arrests and constant convictions. Of course, computer users around the world were outraged when they discovered that the U.S. government had openly viewed their e-mail.Even pen pals who exchange e-mails for fun suffer from prying eyes.Program developers around the world are working on new strategies to make e-mail more secure.They quickly found a way-public key code (note: because it needs to be deciphered twice, there is no need to worry about the password being deciphered by others.) Encryption method, public key encryption method was born in this way. Public key cryptography may seem simple, but it is actually a remarkable invention.It is mainly realized by simple and easy home computer software, which can switch (note: switch, the original text scramble, originally refers to the frequency of switching (radio, TV signals, etc.) (so that it cannot be detected without special equipment) receive).) personal email messages, making them completely unreadable.After the user has written the letter, he can encrypt the letter with encryption software, and what the recipient sees is garbled characters—completely unreadable, in fact, this is a password.The interceptor of this transmission can only see garbled characters on the screen.