Handbook of Applied Cryptography
by Alfred J. Menezes, Paul C. Van Oorschot, Scott A. Vanstone
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (16 October, 1996)
list price: $99.95 -- our price: $87.31
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Reviews (16)

Advanced Crypto for the college mind.
This very detailed work is not for the light hearted. It's an in depth look at the mathmatics behind cryptography. If you're looking for a book to help you program then look for Applied Cryptography by Bruce the crypto king instead. If you're looking for something to help you learn cryptoanalysis and how to break codes then this is the first step.

Fantastic traditional reference
The Chapter 14 - Efficient Implementation - shows several multiple precision algorithms. They are very easy to understand and implement under any microprocessor. It is a very good complement to the book set written by Donald Knuth (The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set), another fantastic traditional reference.

A very detailed book, but not for everyone.
This is a fairly strong book on crypto, with heavy detail on the math involved.The upside is that the second chapter is devoted to most of the important mathematical theory you'll need to understand for the rest of the book.The downside?That chapter tries to cover just about the same breadth of information as a semester long course in Number Theory.

If you don't have a ton of mathematical background and are scared of having to take a crash course in number theory, or are looking for a higher level view of things, I'd suggest something more along the lines of Bruce Schneier's 'Applied Cryptography' (ASIN 0471117099). If you have some mathematical background, but want to get into things in detail, this is probably for you.

If you're not sure whether you'll like the book, you should definitely take a look at it. While Amazon currently doesn't have sample pages, if you do a Web Search on "Handbook of Applied Cryptography", you can find Sample Chapters hosted online to give you a good feel for the book's style. ... Read more

Isbn: 0849385237
Sales Rank: 118544
Subjects:  1. Access control    2. Algorithms (Computer Programming)    3. Computer Bks - General Information    4. Computers    5. Cryptography    6. Cryptography/Access Control    7. Discrete Mathematics    8. Handbooks, manuals, etc    9. Reference    10. Security   

Foundations of Cryptography: Volume 1, Basic Tools
by Oded Goldreich
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (06 August, 2001)
list price: $80.00 -- our price: $69.56
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Reviews (3)

Fundamental book for anyone working with cryptography
This book, that you can see some parts on the authors site, is a essencial on everyone desk working on security and cryptography. Itis not a book of recipes of how to build a secure cryptographic environment but a fundamental book on the basics of cryptography and cryptographic protocols.

Great idea -- needs a good editor!
This book hits some extremes in good and bad.The good is easy:There are few (no?) other books that fill the niche of theoretical cryptography.There are some excellent lecture notes from Bellare and Goldwasser that are available on the web, but they don't go into the detailed motivation of topics that Goldreich does.The topics that Goldreich has chosen cover a lot of important areas, and he has done a great job of pulling out the best, most essential results to present.

However, the bad part is that the writing is simply horrible.There seems to be little planning and things simply don't flow at all.Here's a specific example, which is so bad as to almost be funny:There's a huge use of footnotes for side comments, mostly because of this "stream of consciousness" writing that doesn't work things in properly.The first footnote in chapter 4 says, believe it or not, "See Footnote 13".Huh?So I go digging through the later part of the chapter, looking desperately for this gem of knowledge that will be in footnote 13, and what is it?The definition of a graph!Now come on -- chapter 4 of a book, where we've been dealing with advanced topics in computer science, and they feel the need to define a graph!?!?!Through several levels of indirection in footnotes?Come on guys, what editor let that one through?

Oded is a great computer scientist, and a good guy, but please, PLEASE get a good editor for the other volumes, or maybe even a good writer to team up with!

Superb presentation of the theoretical foundations.
We all know what it means for an algorithm to compute a function, but what does it mean for an encryption scheme to be secure? Traditionally, cryptographic schemes were suggested and attacked based on ad-hoc criterias, for lack of a proper theoretical setting. The last two decades have seen enormous progress in this respect. New notions were devised to harness the computational difficulty of problems in a constructive way to achieve security (in various senses) against all adversaries. This enabled the definition of a host of well-defined cryptographic "objects" and investigation of their existence and relations.

The planned 3-volume series aims to provide a thorough presentation of the theory, written by a dominant figure in the field. This first volume introduces the basic notions: one-way functions, pseudorandom generators, various zero-knowledge proof systems and related concepts. Curiously, common cryptographic objects such as encryption schemes and signature schemes are only briefly discussed in an appendix -- the author has chosen to postpone these to the Volume 2 in the interest of in-depth discussion of the simpler objects. Hence this volume does not stand well on its own, and until Volume 2 is published the impatient reader may be disappointed. Fortunately, drafts of Volume 2 are available on-line: www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/foc-vol2.html

The presentation style is a tour de force of didactic sensitivity. The subject material is often problematic, because the mental gymnastics required are not quite like any other field. The author is fully aware of this, and provides ample intuitive discussion and motivation to help the reader through the more technical parts (without compromising rigorousness). A clear effort is made to present, or at least mention and reference, all interesting results pertaining to the discussion. This makes the book invaluable as a reference, though it could have been overwhelming had not the author taken care to separate these excursions from the main discussion. The exercises are usually well-considered and rewarding, and unlike some textbooks you won't find important results disguised as an optional exercise.

Those interested primarily in practical applications of cryptography may well find this book too abstract and irrelevant; the relation between this book and Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" is roughly like that between organic chemistry and cooking. However, for those taking academic interest in the field or trying to devise novel cryptographic schemes, this book is an effective way to get a solid grasp on the theory, and a delightful way to understand this exciting branch of computer science. ... Read more

Isbn: 0521791723
Sales Rank: 262063
Subjects:  1. Business Writing    2. Coding Theory    3. Computer Bks - General Information    4. Computer Books: General    5. Computers    6. Cryptography    7. Cryptography/Access Control    8. Mathematics    9. Programming - Systems Analysis & Design    10. Security    11. Coding theory & cryptology    12. Computers / General    13. Data security & data encryption    14. Network security   

Pseudorandomness and Cryptographic Applications (Princeton Computer Science Notes)
by Michael Luby
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (08 January, 1996)
list price: $45.00 -- our price: $38.22
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Editorial Review

Pseudorandomness and Cryptographic Applications, by Michael Luby, presents the mathematical underpinnings of one-way hash functions, which can be used to implement pseudorandom number generators. (These have a wide array of applications in cryptography.) After covering these basic mathematical ideas, the author delves into their applications in cryptosystems. Organized in 18 lectures, this book provides a mathematically intense treatise on the subject without much commentary in between. A set of exercises accompanies each chapter and a bibliography concludes the text. Filled with elegant mathematics, this is clearly a book for academic specialists. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Definitely worth studying
Walking into a colleague's office and noticing papers scattered all over her desk and shelves, I remarked on the apparent disorganization. She explained that from her standpoint everything was organized and easy to find. Randomness, she said, is observer dependent.

This is the theme taken in this book, namely tha a proper concept of randomness is not an intrinsic property of a collection or a distribution, but rather is dependent of the tools and computing capabilities of the observer. The concept of a pseudorandom distribution is introduced as a distribution where no efficient procedure or program can distinguish it from a uniform distribution. Pseudorandom generators are polynomial-time deterministic programs that take a randomly selected seed and expand it into a pseudorandom bit sequence.

The preliminaries/introduction gives an overview of sets, set functions, big-O, little-o notation, and most importantly from the author's standpoint, function and probability ensembles. He defines what it means to have a source of random bits, but does not give algorithms on how to produce them. Complexity classes are also discussed for both the deterministic and probabilistic cases, along with a very brief review of probability.

Private key cryptosystems begin the next chapter with an example of a one-time-pad private key cryptosystems. Pseudorandom generators are introduced as a solution to the problem of sending secure messages that are longer than the private key.

The author does a good job of defining computational and statistical indistinguishability, and the connection between 1-way functions and pseudorandom generators. What is interesting about all of these constructions is that they are based on sequences of probability distributions (called ensembles in the book) instead of a single probability distribution. The author defines ensembles as being different and close in the statistical sense and then uniform and pseudorandom.

The approach he takes is helpful because he gives informal definitions to develop the reader's intuition and then moves on to the formal definitions. After reading the book, one takes away an appreciation of what pseudorandomness is all about and how it applies to cryptography. ... Read more

Isbn: 0691025460
Subjects:  1. Advanced    2. Computational complexity    3. Computer Bks - General Information    4. Computer Data Security    5. Data encryption (Computer scie    6. Data encryption (Computer science)    7. Mathematics    8. Numbers, Random    9. Random number generators    10. Science/Mathematics    11. Security    12. Theory Of Numbers    13. Mathematics / Advanced   

Cryptography: Theory and Practice, Second Edition
by Douglas Stinson
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (27 February, 2002)
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Editorial Review

Douglas R. Stinson's Cryptography: Theory and Practice is a mathematically intensive examination of cryptography, including ciphers, the Data Encryption Standard (DES), public key cryptography, one-way hash functions, and digital signatures. Stinson's explication of "zero-sum proofs"--a process by which one person lets another person know that he or she has a password without actually revealing any information--is especially good.

If you are new to the math behind cryptography but want to tackle it, the author covers all of the required background to understand the real mathematics here. Cryptography includes extensive exercises with each chapter and makes an ideal introduction for any math-literate person willing to get acquainted with this material. ... Read more

Reviews (14)

Good book after Schneier's Non-Mathematical Treatment
If you are an engineer trying to learn crypto, maybe get a book on number theory to go with this book. It'd be nice if there were fewer errors and more worked out problems, as well.

Overall a good effort but written by a mathematican so you needa book like Schenier's that explains how to use the tools. Maybe Scheier is the one I'd read first. Then readStinson's to understand how the tools work because Scheier's book is mathematically barren.

Volume I of What May Become the Definitive Work
This book takes a fairly rigorous mathematical approach to cryptography. It is intended for upper level undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, computer science and engineering. I suspect only the quite mathematically inclined computer science and engineering students will find this book helpful. This is not a Boy Scout how to do secret messages book, but a book that will give the professional the data needed to implement cryptographic software, and the mathematician hints on both code breaking and creating.

This is the second edition of this book which includes:

the latest Federal Information Processing Standards
the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)
Wiener's attack on low decryption exponent RSA
substitution-permutation networks to introduce block cipher design and analysis concepts,
the Random Oracle model for hash functions, and much more.

Some things included in the first edition have been removed with the promise from the author to do a volume II that will take these sections and expand them and with more material.

Could be a great book .... but it falls short
As other people have pointed out, this is not a mathematics book, and it is not an algorithm (recipies) book. It could be a great book for people that are interested in learning these tools to actually use them, either in a research or product development context (something besides homework). Unfortunately, the number of typos, in key mathematical expressions AND PORTIONS OF THE EXPLANATIONS is staggering. Go to the author's web page and you will find that some chapters, like 4 for example, average more than one typo per page (and some of these 'typos' are full sentences, or math expressions that do not look like anything that is actually printed on the page). If you do not have that errata sheet handy, you will waste a lot of time trying to understand the text, or trying to solve the exercises. If you are trying to learn from this book, without attending a class and without the errata, you will simply give up. It is a real shame because it has all the makings of a great book. ... Read more

Isbn: 1584882069
Subjects:  1. Applied    2. Coding theory    3. Computer Bks - Communications / Networking    4. Computer Books: General    5. Computer Science    6. Computers    7. Cryptography    8. Cryptography/Access Control    9. Discrete Mathematics    10. Discrete Mathematics (Computer Science)    11. Security   

The Design of Rijndael: AES - The Advanced Encryption Standard (Information Security and Cryptography)
by Joan Daemen, Vincent Rijmen
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (15 February, 2002)
list price: $57.95 -- our price: $41.41
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Reviews (1)

Required if you do anything w/ AES
This book is great, straight from the designers of Rijndael.

you could not find a better book in the subject.

my only gripe is the price, a bit on the high end. ... Read more

Isbn: 3540425802
Sales Rank: 167993
Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - Communications / Networking    2. Computer Books: Database    3. Computer security    4. Computers    5. Cryptography/Access Control    6. Data encryption (Computer scie    7. Data encryption (Computer science)    8. Passwords    9. Security   

Advances in Cryptology, 1981-1997: Electronic Proceedings and Index of the Crypto and Eurocrypt Conferences 1981-1997 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)
by Kevin S. McCurley, Claus Dieter Ziegler
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 June, 1999)
list price: $109.00 -- our price: $109.00
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Reviews (3)

Technical problems....
I love the idea of having a good-sized library of important research on CD-ROM.However, they really needed some people who were more technically competent to produce this CD-ROM.

For example, they have not used thestandard Rock Ridge CD format, so when mounted on a Unix system (and notusing flags available only to root) it simply doesn't work:the filenamesare treated as lower case, and all the links on the CD are in upper case. On a system like Windows, that can't distinguish between upper and lowercase in filenames, this isn't a problem.But for those of us who don't useWindows it's a serious problem.I ended burning a copy of the CD with allupper-case file names, and that works -- but people who use Unix (includingLinux) and don't have a CD burner are going to have some realproblems.

Secondly, the scanned pages are all in the standardSpringer-Verlag small page format, but for some reason the scanned imagesare much larger with lots of whitespace at the bottom.That means that mystandard acrobat setting of "fit page" has the text about 2/3 ofthe size that it should, and it's hard to read.It seems like anyeditorial person reviewing the scanned material would have recognized andtried to fix this problem.

Finally, the book that accompanies the CD isjust ridiculous -- it duplicates material on the CD, and simply adds to theproduction (and so retail) cost, and wastes paper.

Overall, this is avaluable resource, and I'll hold on to it.I just wish the publishers hadmade some more intelligent choices along the way....

CD-ROM Collection of most major academic papers in crypto
This CD-ROM contains an excellent collection of academic referreed papers in the area of cryptography.The papers are highly technical -- beginners would do better with a book like Handbook of Applied Cryptography or Applied Cryptography.

For researchers and people learning the mathematics of cryptography, this collection assembled by Kevin McCurley isunquestionably the best purchase available.

I don't know, i haven't looked it yet
Dear sir, I am just wondering does this book (ISBN #3540650695) include a CD?? If yes, I will buy this book right away, and please reply me ASAP.Thanks for your time. ... Read more

Isbn: 3540650695
Sales Rank: 699516
Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - General Information    2. Computer Science    3. Computer security    4. Computers    5. Congresses    6. Congresses.    7. Cryptography    8. Cryptography/Access Control    9. General    10. Science/Mathematics    11. Security