On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 10:08:37PM +0200, Johan Wevers wrote: > Not directly related to GnuPG, but does anyone here know the book > "Handbook of Applied Cryptography" fromn A.J. Menezes, P.C. van Oorschoot > and S.A. Vanstone, printed in 1996? I found it on eDonkey and wanted to > know if someone knows if it is advisable. It appears quite mathematical > in its approach, much more so than Schneier's "Applied Cryptography".
I have both books, among others. HAC seems to be highly regarded as a reference amongst cryptographers, while AC is more of a popular exposition for non-cryptographers. HAC is more academic in tone; it's dense with definitions, facts, algorithms, and examples, and the chapter endnotes contain a lot of background information. It's also free[1]. AC is more conversational, making it approachable for newcomers. If you've read AC and want more detail then HAC might have what you're looking for. Both books are about a decade old so you'll find nothing about AES and only brief mention of elliptic curves. Newer books worth considering are _Practical Cryptography_ by Ferguson and Schneier, with less coverage than AC but with more emphasis on using cryptography to build a secure system; and _Modern Cryptography_ by Mao, with more math and rigor. The latter book has production flaws like numerous typos and a poor binding (at least on my copy) but I liked the author's emphasis on showing why "textbook crypto" is insufficient for building secure systems -- something obvious to cryptographers but less so to the naive. Rescorla's _SSL and TLS_ is good, being a detailed description of how a real, widely-used protocol works. Another interesting book is _Decrypted Secrets_ by Bauer, especially if you're interested in rotor machines and cryptanalysis of classical ciphers. Here are a few links with book recommendations: http://www.youdzone.com/cryptobooks.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_on_cryptography http://www.schlafly.net/crypto/faq.htm [1] http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/ -- Michael Fuhr _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
