Re: End-of-chapter questions for Practical Cryptography?

2009-05-29 Thread Your Monkey Overlord
On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Perry E. Metzger pe...@piermont.com wrote:

 may be mistaken but I'm not aware of any significantly superior
 alternatives.

What about Mao's *Modern Cryptography* ?

As for Paul's question, maybe we can collaborate as a list on fun
questions for readers of *Practical*.

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End-of-chapter questions for Practical Cryptography?

2009-05-22 Thread Paul Hoffman
Greetings again. I'm helping someone new to the field learn cryptography. He's 
a book-learner, and is starting with Ferguson  Schneier Practical 
Cryptography. I would love to give him some things to think about after each 
chapter to make sure he's thinking about the big picture.

Has anyone on this list used the book to teach a class? If so, did you create a 
list of discussion questions? Or, do people know profs who have used the book 
to teach? Any pointers are appreciated.

--Paul Hoffman

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Re: End-of-chapter questions for Practical Cryptography?

2009-05-22 Thread Perry E. Metzger

Paul Hoffman paul.hoff...@vpnc.org writes:
 Greetings again. I'm helping someone new to the field learn
 cryptography. He's a book-learner, and is starting with Ferguson 
 Schneier Practical Cryptography. I would love to give him some
 things to think about after each chapter to make sure he's thinking
 about the big picture.

 Has anyone on this list used the book to teach a class? If so, did you
 create a list of discussion questions? Or, do people know profs who
 have used the book to teach? Any pointers are appreciated.

Not quite an answer to your question, but it brought this to mind for me.

I taught crypto for a while in an academic setting, though the last time
was about seven or eight years ago. I found that the available texts
were kind of frustrating to use. I used Applied Cryptography and the
Handbook because neither alone was good enough, but truth be told,
even together there were topics I wanted to go over (like modern
cryptanalysis) which were entirely or almost entirely
missing. Practical Cryptography is a bit too practical if one is
trying to teach people academic fundamentals rather than just teach
people about what they need to know to be a user of the technology. I
may be mistaken but I'm not aware of any significantly superior
alternatives.

The field really needs a new, thorough textbook suitable for a one year
course, or maybe an up to date one semester intro text and an up to date
one semester textbook on modern cryptanalysis.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzgerpe...@piermont.com

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Re: End-of-chapter questions for Practical Cryptography?

2009-05-22 Thread Jonathan Katz

On Fri, 22 May 2009, Perry E. Metzger wrote:


The field really needs a new, thorough textbook suitable for a one year
course, or maybe an up to date one semester intro text and an up to date
one semester textbook on modern cryptanalysis.


Let me humbly suggest my own book: Introduction to Modern Cryptography, 
co-authored with Y. Lindell. You may find it a bit theoretical for your 
taste, but it was written exactly to address the need for an introductory 
text covering modern cryptography. (And it covers some basic cryptanalysis 
as well.) See

 http://www.cs.umd.edu/~jkatz/imc.html
for further details.

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