VMs: Re: Venezia's Giovanni Soro

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:59 16/05/02 -0400, Luis Vélez wrote:
> Both David Kahn and Simon Singh make reference to Giovanni Soro:
> "Arguably the first great European cryptanalyst was Giovanni Soro, appointed
> as Venetian cipher secretary in 1506." (Singh). Kahn calls him "perhaps the
> West's first great cryptanalist".
>
> It seems that he ran THE cryptanalisis operation under the control of the
> mysterious Council of the Ten, to which even the Vatican was second. In
> 1542, his offices, according to Kahn in 'The Codebreakers', were in "the
> Doge's Palace, above the Sala di Segret".
>
> His treatise on cryptology, written in the early 1500s is one of the Lost
> Books of cryptology... something like the Amber Room of the Cinquecento
> ciphers.
>
> Nick, do we know if this man ever corresponded with Mr Simonetta from the
> Milano Sforzas?

Cicco (Cecco) Simonetta was executed by Ludovico Sforza in 1480, but I 
don't know Soro's dates by way of comparison. :-(

If their dates do overlap (though I have to say it seems unlikely), it is 
certainly possible that correspondence between them - if such ever happened 
- still exists in a Milanese state archive. I've noted a number of 
references to (older) books and papers on Simonetta - if you're intrigued, 
these might be a sensible place to start looking. :-)