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Digital Fortress is a novel written by Dan Brown. Digital Fortress has many entertaining plot twists and mystic scenarios. The story begins with the introduction of Susan Fletcher, a cryptographist who works at the NSA, and her fiancé, David Becker, who is a language professor who likes to play racquetball. Trevor Strathmore is the head of the NSA cryptography department and has found what he believes to be an unbreakable code, developed by a former NSA employee, Ensei Tankado. The NSA has a supercomputer called the TRANSLTR that is capable of breaking any encrypted code in less than five minutes. Susan is called in by Strathmore because there is an emergency. Strathmore tells Susan that the TRANSLTR has been made obsolete. At first, she does not believe him, but Strathmore then shows Susan that the TRANSLTR has been trying to break the code for over fifteen hours. When Strathmore contacts Tankado to stop the publication, he refuses and Tankado puts a free download on his website. However, no one can open the file until Tankado gives out the password for the file, which is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. He also threatens that if anything were to happen to him, an anonymous third part called “North Dakota” will release it to everyone. Tankado is later found dead in Spain, where Becker is sent to retrieve a ring that he possessed and what they think has the passcode to unlocking Digital Fortress. In an attempt to discover Tankado's third party partner before the word gets out that Tankado is dead, Strathmore asks Susan to put a tracer on the email account for North Dakota, or, “ndakota” that has been set up on an anonymous server. Susan quickly discovers that Strathmore sent David to Spain. Strathmore believes that Tanka...

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...id and she thinks that David is dead. Strathmore fails to shut down TRANSLTR in time, and it explodes, killing him. Susan is able to escape but is scared about her fiancé. The director of the NSA brings Susan to the main databank, where the virus is attacking and everyone is trying to find the kill code. She tells everyone that the code is inscribed on the ring that David found, and the director of the NSA contacts the two agents who have David, and Susan sees her fiancé alive. They find out that the code does not work, and Susan finds a puzzle in the program to shut it down. The code is the number 3. They were able to find it out through the difference between the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, Isotope 235, and the Nagasaki nuclear bomb, isotope 238. These were the bombs that killed Tankado’s mother. The databank is saved before any hackers can get classified information.

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