The Gold-Bug
by Edgar Allan Poe · first published 1845
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2020–2022first – last mentioned
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The discovery of a message in code on a shoreline formerly infested with pirates sends William Legrand and his friends on a hunt for buried treasure.
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My first contact with substitution cyphers and frequency analysis was at 11, reading the Gold Bug from Edgar Allan Poe. I have fond memories of that time, writing and decoding messages with school friends. I have always assume that a lot of people first contact with criptography was that short story.
on “Deciphering Single-Byte XOR Ciphertexts” ↗…less scams etc. As a followup you should also read Edgar Allan Poe's four short stories; three of them featuring Auguste Dupin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Auguste_Dupin) and another named "The Gold Bug". They were an inspiration to Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes and he mentions this in "A Study in Scarlet".
on “Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in?” ↗