Customer Reviews

Contemporary Cryptology: The Science of Information Integrity

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Unlike most books on cryptology, this one tries to give a broad overview not only of conventional ciphers and cryptanalysis, but also of authentication, protocols, zero-knowledge proofs and other aspects of modern cryptology. It is slightly out of date, having been published in 1993, but not seriously so. The editor, Gus Simmons, is a heavyweight researcher who worked for many years at Sandia Labs on such topics as public key ciphers and their uses and weaknesses, and cryptologic methods for ensuring against cheating in certain types of treaties. He wrote the article on cryptology for the 16th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. All the contributors are also experts in their specialties. The resulting book requires considerable knowledge of math, computer science and cryptology to understand fully, but it is well worth reading for those who can wade through it. The 14 chapters will not all be equally interesting to all readers; to me, for example, Joan Feigenbaum's "Overview of Interactive Proof Systems and Zero-Knowledge", the chapter on "Cryptanalysis: A Survey of Recent Results" by E. F. Brickell and Andrew Odlyzko, and "Protocol Failures in Cryptosystems" by J. H. Moore, are particularly interesting because they gave me a coherent picture of three topics in which I had encountered various results and had fragmentary knowledge. Other readers may have different favorites, but there's something here for almost anyone. My only criticism is that the chapter on "The Data Encryption Standard: Past and Future" by Miles Smid and Dennis Branstad, is disingenuous, and seems to me misleading in some respects. For example, it fails to mention several features of the DES standard itself, and it fails to point out the most serious vulnerability of software implementations of DES (which should be implemented in hardware to be secure, as the standard notes.) The chapter also fuzzes up the role of NSA in dealing with both IBM and NBS. In particular, it doesn't make clear that NSA found a weakness in IBM's original "Lucifer" cipher, and guided IBM in removing the weakness. Nor does it even hint that NBS, which was supposedly the chooser and promulgator of the DES standard, was in no position to exercise independent judgment on the matter; the chief technical consultant to NBS about DES was Arthur J. Levenson, who although nominally retired from NSA at the time, could still be most easily reached in his NSA office at Fort Meade, not at NBS, and not at IBM's Federal Systems Division, where he had nominally gone after "retiring" from NSA. This is not a criticism of DES, which is a remarkably good cipher; it is a grumble that almost 20 years after the events described in this chapter, the authors still felt it necessary to fuzz up the history of the topic, which at least Dennis Branstad was intimately familiar with. Except for this one complaint, I find the entire book admirable.

This book is for anybody interested in cryptography, with some background in classical algebra, or more specifically number theory. It is a collection of papers written by well known individuals in the crytography field, among whom are Diffie, Simmons, and Odlyzko.

The first section of the book, which includes the first five papers, introduces the history of cryptography and addresses isues which are which still persist like asymmetric key cryptography and DES/AES.

The following sections address issues which are are only now coming to public attention. With the emergence of e-commerce worries of privacy, authentication, and non-repudiation strikes fear into the heart of the vulnerable customer. However, these ideas are long in contemplation and have been for almost a decade. These papers acknowledge the difficulties which lie ahead.

As an undergraduate student I liked this book for its mixture of information. The history component is eye opening and interesting, while discussions of the future are at times scary. Although the mathematics in this book were not trivial, with study they can become fascinating. This book is a true learning experience, especially in this day and age.