At 10:43 AM 01/06/1999 -0500, MIKE SHAW wrote:
>
>Can anyone recommend some entry level cryptography books? I'm looking for
something that will just start to get into the nitty-gritty of the math
involved.
>
> Schneier, "Applied Cryptography"
> Menezes & Oorschot, "Handbook of Applied Cryptography".
> --Perry]
I'd like to disagree with Perry about entry-level books. I don't see the
Handbook of Applied Cryptography (HAC) as a great introductory text, but as
a very useful reference. HAC would work well for a graduate level course,
but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who hasn't been doing modern algebra,
number theory and statistics for the last couple of years. While Applied
Cryptography (AC) covers lots of encryption algorithms and includes
protocols, sometime often ignored in most textbooks, AC has one area that
it isn't great in (IMHO) and I hope to see corrected in its next version. I
think for the material covered, there is a lack of cryptanalysis to
"balance" things out. This lack of cryptanalysis reduces the amount of math
knowledge to read the book, but it also limits the AC's use as a
nitty-gritty book about details.
For more of an under grad textbook level with mathematics I'd recommend D.
Denning's _Cryptography and Data Security_, although it is hard to find
now. D. Stinson's _Cryptography: Theory and Practice_ is perhaps the most
used textbook currently. I wish I had it or Denning's book when I took a
course on cryptography. _A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography_ by N.
Koblitz isn't for the math leery, but it is a good mathematically rich
intro to cryptography.
_Cryptography and Data Security_ and HAC have math refresher which will
help if you need a reminder for various areas of mathematics (complexity,
number theory, information theory), but these are not complete
self-contained courses, they are only refreshers.
I'd recommend buying Stinson's or Koblitz's textbooks for a good
mathematical introduction and considering buying one of HAC or Applied
Cryptography as a reference.
