Brute Force: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard

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Brute Force (2005, Copernicus Books) is a book by Matt Curtin about cryptography.

In this book, the author accounts his involvement in mobilizing thousands of personal computers in 1997 in order to meet the challenge to crack a single message encrypted with DES.

This was and remains one of the largest collaborations of any kind on a single project in history.

The message was unencrypted on June 18th and was found to be "Strong cryptography makes the world a safer place."

This is also the message of Matt's book. He uses a personal account and a compelling story to reveal to the uninitiated reader some insight into a topic of growing importance which is known for being quite complicated both technically and politically.