Customer Reviews

Cryptography: Theory and Practice (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

A book that tries to cover the theory and practice of cryptography in only four hundred pages has to make a lot of ruthless choices.

Professor Stinson wisely concentrates on theory, with a few nods to practice like explaining efficient modular exponentiation.

The theoretical material starts with the indispensable foundation of information theory and jumps straight into the operation of commercially important algorithms and their weaknesses. These are short but well done. For example Stinson has the best presentation of differential cryptanalysis that I've seen.

The breadth is good, covering most of the important magic that you can work with crypto: secret sharing, key exchange, zero knowledge proofs, etc.

Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a discussion of the blinding techniques used in Chaum's digital cash. Maybe that's because they're not yet a major part of the landscape, but then why spend space on the McEliece system?

A useful fraction of the book is accessible if you just have high school math, all of it with college math.

This would be a fine introduction to crypto.

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 third edition of this book. With the second edition, the author got rid of several several subjects that were not right at the core of cryptography, with the intend of doing a second volume. Instead, the art and scienct of cryptography has changed so fast during the past few years that a two volume approach isn't practical. Instead, he has produced this third edition that picks back up many of the subjects from the first edition. All of the material in this edition has been extensively re-written to incorporate the latest theories and practices.

In recent years the use of cryptography has increased by several orders of magnitude. Every time we buy something with a credit card, use on line banking, send a password to access e-mail, we use cryptography. With this growth, the interest at software companies, universities, and other places has grown accordingly and this text has become the standard by which others are compared.

Highly recommended for the serious student.

The large number of errors and typographical mistakes in this book severly reduce its value as a reference or a textbook. A current errata list is available on the author's web site. In a book as math-centric as this one, typographical mistakes in key formulas and examples is inexcusable.

For what this book sells for, especially considering how short it is at less than 400 pages, they should have done a much better job proofreading and checking the excercises than they did before it hit the presses. Unless you need this as a text book, wait for the third edition or find another reference. This one isn't worth the money.

Very good book if you are interested in criptography and secret maths. Not many publication on this topic are written as clear as this. Other like Neal Koblitz's Book on criptography is a lot harder for people on lower level of maths knowledge. I recomed it to those who want to learn something or for those who want to refresh their memory .

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 need a book like Schenier's that explains how to use the tools. Maybe Scheier is the one I'd read first. Then read Stinson's to understand how the tools work because Scheier's book is mathematically barren.

** Covers all the essential areas (except random numbers).

** This edition has alot of errors (typos mostly).

** For a compsci guys the math is probably very detailed but for me (as a mathematician) I think he takes too much for granted.

** Better than Schnier on cryptanalysis and attack mentality.

** The section on linear cryptanalysis took along time to understand though, and the break came when I downloaded additional tutorials from the internet.

** Very good section on AES.

** The algorithm descriptions (in pseudocode) are terrible to read, they are next to unreadable actually. He uses unnecessary indices, and the code is often thrown right in your face without explaination.

** The book is way too expensive, so at the end of the day I suggest students should be downloading the free e-book "Handbook of Applied Cryptography" instead... but if you work for a company with alot of money... this book is still pretty good.

The textbook introduces various areas of cryptography to undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and computer science. It covers classical cryptosystems, Shannon's approach to perfect secrecy, block ciphers and hash functions. Public-key cryptography, signature schemes and pseudo random number generators are also discussed in detail. Other chapters discuss key distribution and entity authentication. The book is geared toward serving as a class-room textbook with numerous solved examples and exercises. It genuinely deserves its reputation as an indispensable textbook for cryptography teaching.

purchased this book only to find out that it is unusable on my android device. so i have to read it on my windows pc or go out and by another device. since the drm prevents me from printing, this one may be getting returned.

The book provides an in depth analysis of cryptographic protocols from the classical introductory protocols, through advanced methods in cryptography. A nice addition to your bookshelf for reference on implementing protocols and for performing cryptanalysis.