[3031] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Reading List
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Del Torto)
Tue Jul 21 17:50:40 1998
In-Reply-To: <199807210201.WAA15410@jekyll.piermont.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 12:53:24 -0700
To: Jon Callas <jon@callas.org>
From: Dave Del Torto <ddt@lsd.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
At 7:01 pm -0700 980720, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>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.
[elided]
>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.
Agreed -- and the (other) "Applied Cryptography" book by Paul van O (et
alia) is also IMHO absolutely essential to have in addition to Schneier's,
but I'd like to add yet another excellent book...
Aegean Park Press (714.586.8811, Irvine CA), which publishes a large number
of books on the topic (any of which are recommended), publishes a wonderful
book entitled "Six Lectures Concerning Cryptography and Cryptanalysis" by
William Friedman. It's #67 in their series, and the ISBN is: 0-89412-246-0.
I got my copy at 'Books With a Past' in Maryland (410.442.3740, just north
of TIS in Glenwood).
Friedman's book covers roughly the same epoch as Kahn's original
"Codebreakers" (i.e. from Semiramis' Egypt to the end of WWII). It
describes itself thusly: "...an edited and expanded version of a now
unclassified document, SRH-4, which can be found in the National Archives,
Washington DC. These lectures were serialized in the [NSA]'s Technical
journal from 1959 to 1961."
Needless to say, Friedman was a great crypto-historian and raconteur and
the book is full of interesting information for all levels of readers,
along with many screened images of his slides. He explains many social and
technical facets of military cryptology, in a user-friendly way, for an NSA
audience.
dave
____________________________________________________________________________
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million keyboards will
eventually brute force the 56-bit DES keyspace. Now -- thanks to the EFF
-- we know this is not true." --Prof. Randy M. Syfur
