BOOK
REVIEW
MYSTICAL MATH
By Gregory Conti

Tetraktys
Ari Juels
Emerald Bay Books
ISBN-13: 978-0-9822837-0-7
$25.00

Admittedly, the idea of a computer scientist, even a top-tier one like Ari Juels, writing fiction concerned me at first. It’s not that a computer scientist can’t write good fiction, it’s just that there can be a wide cultural, even spiritual, gap between conducting quality research and writing quality fiction that may be impossible for all but a rare voice to cross. However, Tetraktys elegantly creates a bridge to provide compelling and intellectually stimulating reading for the technologist and the Luddite alike.

Tetraktys is the story of Ambrose
Jerusalem, a Berkeley Ph.D. student
on the cusp of completing his dis-
sertation. As both cryptographer and
classicist, Ambrose is recruited by the
National Security Agency to analyze a
string of attacks against major corpo-
rate and governmental nodes that all
lead to an unsettling conclusion: RSA
encryption has been broken because
the problem of efficiently factor-
ing large numbers has been solved.
Factorization is the discovery of inte-
ger divisors of numbers, such that the
divisors, when multiplied, equal the
original number. The RSA encryption
algorithm assumes that factoring large
numbers is computationally infeasible.
If this assumption is incorrect, RSA
fails. The clues being uncovered lead
the NSA to believe that a Pythagorean
cult is behind the attacks. Founded
by Pythagoras, an ancient Greek phi-
losopher and mathematician, famous
for the Pythagorean Theorem attrib-
uted to him, the cult originated as a
dedicated band of his most devout
followers. Long considered a myth,
NSA believes the cult exists today, per-
haps after remaining underground for
centuries, and that the Pythagoreans
possess the secret of factoring effi-
ciently and are prepared to exploit it.
However, the Pythagorean ethos is
so foreign that the NSA and its tech-
nologist culture is stymied. Ambrose,
however, has an unusual affinity with
classical culture and is brought in to
help. Being told “Your country needs
you” is enough to get him started.