Digital Fortress
This book is a story about how the best cryptographer in the world could break the unbreakable code in just one day to save the National Security Agency from a threat that ended up saving also the life of her fiancée.
Analysis:
Digital Fortress is a techno-thriller novel written by the America’s bestselling author Dan Brown and published in 1998 by St. Martin’s Press. The event of the book goes this way. When the United State’s best security agency, National Security Agency, encounter a code that the supercomputer (TRNSLTR) couldn’t break, Commander Trevor J. Strathmore quickly contact his head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a beautiful mathematician who is also best in breaking codes. Working together, Strathmore identified the unbreakable code as “digital fortress” and Fletcher find out that it is made by their former employee, Ensei Tankado. Tankado is against on NSA’s TRNSLTR machine that could break any emails. He believed that it takes away each person’s privacy. He has this “who will guard the guards” question in mind. Frightened by the threat of Tankado that if this code will be available in public the TRNSLTR will be useless for it cannot break that code, Fletcher and Strathmore kept the problem and work together to break the code before anyone notices its existence, believing that “no code is unbreakable”—Bergofsky Principle. Trying to look for solution, Strathmore let the TRNSLTR working for 18 hours and hacked Tankado’s account only to find out that the code was protected by 2 different pass keys and that he has a partner –North Dakota (NDAKOTA) who also holds the other pass key.
After hearing Tankado’s heart attack at Seville’s park that causes his death, Strathmore asks David Becker (Susan Fletcher’s Fiancee and is also working on NSA as language translator) to get the ring of Tankado which they believe that the other pass key was inscribe to it. However, Becker finds out that the ring was given away before Tankado take his final breath. Trying to recover the ring, He searched for the possible persons who got the ring and did anything to find it. Each person he questions during the searches was been killed by Hulohot, a mysterious assassin wearing wire-rim glasses and hearing aid.
Meanwhile, there’s a communication between North Dakota and Numataka. Numataka is the owner of a large computer company in Tokyo and has been offered by North Dakota to purchase the pass key that he holds and the pass key of Tankado which North Dakota admits of killing Tankado for the pass key by hiring Huluhot. At NSA, Fletcher’s continous investigation leads her to believe that Hale Greg, also an employee, is North Dakota. Unaware of digital fortress’s existence, Phil Chartrukian is the NSA’s technician who notices the 18 hours working TRNSLTR on his working place and made a diagnostics, only to believe that there is someone who bypassed Gauntlet (virus/worm filter program) and let the virus into the TRNSLTR without checking if it is clean or not. Chartrukian was very worried and panic about the virus in TRNSLTR that he tries to consult to Strathmore but Strathmore is still keeping the existence of the unbreakable code and instruct Chartrukian to go home because everything is being handled. However, Chartrukian didn’t come out of the NSA alive; he is murdered by being pushed off the catwalk in the sub-levels of TRNSLTR by an unknown person which in effect, damages the cooling system of the TRNSLTR. Since Hale and Strathmore were in the sub-levels, Fletcher accused Hale killing Chartrukian but Hale insisted that he didn’t kill Chartrukian, that he saw Strathmore pushed Chartrukian.
Since Hale realizes that Fletcher wouldn’t believe what he just witnessed, he then holds Fletcher as hostage so that he wouldn’t go in prison. While holding Fletcher, he then confess 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 Strathmore makes his move and hale apparently got unconscious, Fletcher tracked the email account of North Dakota only to find out that North Dakota and Tankado is the same person. While Fletcher is busy tracking the email account, Strathmore shoot Hale in the head and arranges the scene to appear as it was suicide.
At Seville, there was an encounter between David Becker and Hulohot. Hulohot got this routine wherein he recorded all his killings even though he hasn’t yet killed the target by writing through his wire-rim glass that the target has been terminated. Since Becker got the ring and Hulohot was instructed to kill anyone just to hand him the ring, Hulohot got killed by their encounter. In NSA, same time, Fletcher discovers through Strathmore’s pager that he is the one who hired Holohot and that he thought Becker was dead.
In some chapters, Strathmore reveals his hidden plan. Hiring Hulohot to kill Tankado, having Becker recover Tankado’s ring, and at the same time arranging for Hulohot to kill him, have a romantic relationship with Fletcher, and unlocking Digital Fortress. Contacting Numataka and posing as North Dakota, he thought he could partner with Numataka to make a digital fortress chip equipped with his own backdoor so that the NSA could spy on every computer equipped with these chips. However, Strathmore was unaware that the unbreakable code is ctually a computer worm that travels from the TRNSLTR to the NSA’s Databank, where the important codes in the world were being secured inside databank, it is like a big memory card for NSA. When TRNSLT overheats, Strathmore realizes he had just let the worm in the databank by bypassing Gauntlet, that he will be doomed. As the TRNSLTR began to explode, Strathmore commits suicide by standing next to the explosion. But before the explosion eat him; he mounted the word SUSAN as Susan was looking at his commander. Fletcher then realizes she is also going to die if she can’t get out of that place, then he remembered the password automated elevator and then she remember Strathmore’s last words.
Safe from the explosion, Susan was carried to the databank’s office. The worm eventually gets into the database. Jabba (NSA’s sys-sec senior officer who also created the Gauntlet), his team, Leland Fontaine (the director of NSA), Chad Brinkerhoff (personal assistant of Fontaine), and Susan Fletcher, gather in one room to figure out the passkey to prevent the worm on eating the files. A few minutes left for them to figure the passkey when David was eventually alive and was communication from Seville to NSA via webcam. Tankado left a clue for them to figure out the passkey. Few seconds left, David Becker figures out the password, and they were able to terminate the worm. The NSA allows Becker to return to the U.S., reuniting him with Fletcher. In the epilogue, it is revealed that Numataka is Ensei Tankado’s Father. Numataka left Tankado the day he was born since Tankado was a deformed child. Throughout the story, some of the situations are questionable. But Brown wrote best thriller books I’ve ever read. He let his reader into a world of computer programming and a universe that was not that far from reality.
Ensei Tankado wants the national security agency to publicize the existence of the TRNSLTR because he believed that TRNSLTR illegally takes the human rights of each person. Tankado didn’t realize that it is more important to prevent terrorist attacks than respecting human rights. In reality, all people will authorized that machine to open their emails than bombing the entire city. But Tankado’s was not the antagonist in the story. Tankado clearly didn’t want the NSA to break down; he just wanted to publicize the TRNSLTR. When he was about to die, he was not actually giving the ring to the people around him because he don’t want the NSA to have it knowing the passkey was inscribed to it, he actually raising his 3 deformed finger for the NSA to know that the passkey is 3. Brown describes Tankado as a person who believed that human rights are more important than national security.
Brown uses too many coincidences for the search of Tankado’s ring. First, Becker found the old man by coincidence. He was supposedly talking to an old man who apparently was the old man he’s been looking for. Second Becker found the girl even though the girl is really hard to locate on that night. He got to a place, then a young person was talking to him like he’s pissed off, then Becker coincidently was talking to a person that was related to the girl and led him to the information he needed to track the girl. Believing that it is impossible to meet the girl because by that time the girl was about to take her flight, Becker coincidently meet the girl in the airport’s bathroom. Too many coincident makes the story more fiction and pursuing the readers that the story could never happen in the real life settings.
Strathmore hired Hulohot because he was the best assassin. Hulohot killed his targets easily, but finds it hard to terminate Becker which led them to a fight or encounter. Brown clearly treated Becker as one of the protagonists of the novel.
While the best people in cryptography gathered at the databank’s office and the intenseness of finding the passkey, the panic in each person doesn’t that intensely felt by the reader. Brown wrote that part like they were not that intensely panicking and that Fontane’s assistance was talking and talking even though he doesn’t have the position to make comments inside.
Also during the intense moment of the story, the best cryptographers were gathered and were looking for the passkey. It is too questionable that Brown wrote it as if they can’t really figured out the difference between Uranium 238 and Uranium 235. Just to intensify the moment of figuring out the passkey.
Another scenario is that the NSA’s databank doesn’t have back up and extra protection. In real life any person who was into security wouldn’t let the most important files in the world to be terminated. Security agency will definitely have its back up. Another thing about the NSA is that before the files were transmitted to the databank it should be checked first by software to make sure that it doesn’t have any viruses or worms. In real world, NSA wouldn’t be confident enough to just check the file using only one software; databank is their most precious thing and has to be intensely protected.
The girl who got the ring was frightened by Becker because Becker asks for the ring in indirect point. He said “You’ve got something that I need” to the girl and let the girl thinks he was a bad person. Brown connected it to the world’s social life where everyone may have bad intention when it talks in indirect point instead of saying what it literally means
Brown is a brilliant author that changes my views in the world of security and introduces me to the world of cryptography. It was a very good novel but he wrote some of the scenarios that can questioned in the real life situations.
Documentation:
The photo to the left is the screen shot of what I’ve posted exactly the time when I completely read the book and was trying to make sense of the numbers written on the last page.
