Counting from Zero (40 page)

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If you are interested in learning more about some of the computer and Internet security topics discussed in this book, I’d suggest the following:

For more information about open source and free software (“free as in speech, not as in beer”), there is the
Free Software Foundation
(
http://www.fsf.org
).

For resources on privacy and free speech on the Internet, there is the
Electronic Frontier Foundation
(
https://www.eff.org
) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (
https://www.cdt.org
).

The
Internet Society
(
http://www.isoc.org
) promotes the continued development of an open, free, global Internet through standards, education, and policies.

To get an idea of the dangers of social engineering, and sound policies every organization should implement to protect against it, I would recommend
The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
by Kevin D.
 
Mitnick and William L.
 
Simon.

For those wanting to learn the technical details of security, the classic text is Bruce Schneier’s
Practical Cryptography,
which describes the Diffie-Hellman public key algorithm.

For those wanting to secure their email communication, I would recommend the GNU Privacy Guard or other open source code based on Open PGP
(
http://gnupg.org
).
 
For securing VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) communications, take a look at Zfone (
http://zfoneproject.com
) which
uses the ZRTP protocol, and the open source project Cryptophone (
http://www.cryptophone.de
).

For a history of cryptography and code breaking, I would recommend Simon Singh’s
The Code Book:
The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
.
 
It has an interesting account of the efforts of Alan Turing and others to break the German Enigma encryption during World War II, to the recent history of PGP email encryption and government attempts to control encryption.

For an interesting non-fiction account of real zero day exploits and organized crime's use of the Internet, I would recommend
Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet
by Joseph Menn.