What can Count Monte Cristo tell us about cybersecurity

In 1844, Alexander Dumas described hacking telecommunications based on insider threats and social engineering.

What can a 174-year-old French novel tell about cyber security? It turns out a lot. Alexander Dumas' novel "The Count of Monte Cristo " was published in 1844, and he, of course, did not know anything about the Internet, and probably knew little about electricity. But the writer was well aware of human nature and how people interact with technology, and foresaw how to organize a technological attack, abusing personal phobias.

In the center of the book is such a telecommunication technology as the telegraph, although not familiar to us the electric telegraph - it was developed at the very time when Dumas was writing his novel. In 1837, Charles Cook and William Wheatstone demonstrated their electrical telegraph system in London, and Samuel Morse patented the idea of ​​telegraph in the United States.


A 1793 engraving depicting an optical telegraph tower — part of a national network used by the French revolutionary government.
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The "Monte Cristo Count" uses an optical telegraph. Since the 1790s, the French have built and used this system of communication over long distances, which eventually stretched, forming two main lines - one went from the English Channel to the Mediterranean Sea, and the other - from Spain to Belgium. Each consisted of a sequence of towers, between which there was about 10 km. At the top of each tower was a semaphore - a large rotating cross member with short levers at the ends. When sending a message, each operator adjusted the semaphore so that it coincides with the semaphore of the previous tower; the operator of the next tower did the same, and the message was transmitted along the chain in this way.


Claude Chappe, French engineer, inventor of the telegraph system with visual semaphore signals

The chief engineer of this system was Claude Chappe , who took the idea from the semaphore flags that were used to transmit military messages from the time of Alexander the Great. Chappe developed a system of cables and blocks to control the semaphore, created a code that simultaneously compressed and encrypted messages, and wrote rules for working with it, which, among other things, allowed operators to change the direction of messages.

The optical telegraph appeared during the French Revolution. Chappe began his experiments on the telegraph soon after the rebellion and the taking of the Bastille and in 1789. After the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the revolutionary government decided that it needed a national communications network under its control. At that time, the only method of sending messages over long distances was the post, organized by Louis XIV, and which the royal family, the aristocracy and the clergy continued to exert a strong influence - three groups that were enemies of the revolution and were unworthy of trust.

Optical telegraph Chappa eliminated the enemies of the revolution from the messaging system, and replaced them with ordinary citizens who were paid a modest salary for work at semaphore stations. Dumas described them as "miserable poor creatures" who obeyed strict discipline, who needed to be in office from dawn to dusk, and spy on their colleagues, noting each incorrectly transmitted symbol. “I have no responsibility,” says one operator in the “Monte Cristo graph”. "I mean the car, that's all."

The method of breaking the telegraph, invented by Dumas, was quite predictable. The count, a man who was unjustly imprisoned in his youth, places a false message in the telegraph, which should destroy one of the dishonest people who have done so. He does this through bribing the operator, giving him enough money so that he can leave the telegraph service, escape punishment, and start life anew in another place. The obvious moral is that people are often the weakest link in the technological system.

However, Dumas also revealed the second weak link of the system. The count had not just to throw false information. He needed to make it so that this lie was taken for the truth. No technology, no matter how new or all-powerful it can be, can automatically make the transmitted messages true. The recipients of telegraph messages would begin to criticize and evaluate any information that came into their hands. To emphasize this, Dumas filled the book with characters who did not trust the telegraph. “You think you know everything because the telegraph told you this,” one character says to another. “Believe me, we are informed as well as you.”

The count makes his message resemble the truth, using the second human weakness contained in the French telegraph system. He notes that his victim's wife is friends with a government secretary who has access to the telegraph. The secretary never says, but “stockbrokers immediately shorthand” his words. However, something in the behavior of the secretary says that he has something to hide. Dumas calls this "mind restlessness." Count uses this concern. A private conversation with the count forces the secretary to agree to pass a false message to the victim's wife, who sends it to her husband. This completes the graph plan.

This is how old technologies can give us universal lessons in a simple and understandable language. The weak link of the French telegraph was not unique: all communications systems rely on service personnel, who must obey the rules of work and organizational discipline, while being subject to external influence. As the history of Dumas indicates, these systems are also vulnerable to security risks that go beyond the operating staff.

The readers of the Count of Monte Cristo naturally want to empathize with the hero, the person who eventually gets what he wants: wealth, knowledge, and revenge for his pursuers. However, Dumas says that we, the readers, may not be a hero - we can be an operator who can be bribed, or a secretary who agrees to undermine the telegraph. Technical weaknesses can be found in all communication systems, but often the weakest is in the people who manage and use these systems.