[3021] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
RE: Reading List
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ian Clysdale)
Tue Jul 21 11:48:32 1998
From: Ian Clysdale <iancly@entrust.com>
To: Jon Callas <jon@callas.org>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 09:10:18 -0400
Perry writes:
> Jon Callas writes:
> > What books and articles would you recommend someone to look at to learn
> > about crypto, security, and privacy? I'm looking for suggestions,
> simple,
> > intermediate, and advanced.
>
> For cryptography, I personally recommend two books:
>
> 1) Kahn's "The Codebreakers". No, it won't teach you anything about
> how cryptography is done NOW, but it will teach you a bit of respect
> for the field in a way that no text about the modern science can. "The
> Codebreakers" is the story of how cryptography has been used, misused,
> and broken, for the last 2000 years or so. The biggest practical
> lesson it teaches is that your advesary is out there and will take
> advantage of every mistake you make. BTW, this is the book that I read
> when I was a kid and made me want to study the field -- I hear legend
> that the same thing happened years earlier to Whit Diffie.
>
> 2) Schneier's "Applied Cryptography". This is the best introduction to
> the field of modern (i.e. post-DES, post-public key) cryptography in
> existance.
>
I'd like to add to those two excellent suggestions the "Handbook of Applied
Cryptography" by Menenzes, van Oorschot, and Vanstone. It's significantly
heavier and more advanced than the other two, but makes an amazing reference
if you need to know something about X - whatever it is, it's probably in
there. Also, if you can read and understand everything in it, you'll
probably have more of a theoretical background than most of the people on
the list. I find it one of the more indispensable books on my shelf.
ian
