Customer Reviews

Handbook of Applied Cryptography (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications)

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If you're going to work in the area of Cryptography, you can't afford
to neglect this book.

We used this in a course, and even though it's a handbook, it doubles up
pretty well as a textbook, since it has all the underlying mathematical
theory, presented in a clear and concise manner.

For sheer breadth and depth of coverage, this book is unmatched in the
field. It may not have enough on some topics to satisfy everyone, but
then i suspect most such topics were not so prominent in 1996, which
is when the book was written.

Starting with number theory, it goes on cover pseudorandom bits and
sequences, stream and block ciphers, hash functions, and digital signatures,
establishment protocols, implementation, patents and standards - you name
it, you got it.

On the one hand, there's enough theory to make you wonder whether it
should be called 'applied', but then it indeed qualifies as implementations
are discussed as well.

And of course, there's an exhaustive bibliography, with more pointers to
the literature than one could possibly follow up.

One word of caution, though : it requires hard work. If you want a more
'relaxed' coverage of comparable breadth (but not depth), you can do
worse than look up Bruce Schneier's 'Applied Crypography', which is a
delightful read, but nowhere as rigorous (read academic) as this one.

All in all, this is an indispensable reference for those in the field -
rigorous and exhaustive, yet eminently readable.

If you still haven't made your mind up, here's one final piece of advice :
visit the authors'(rather the book's) website, where you'll get the
implementations of all the algorithms in the book, and a (presumably)
pleasant surprise :-)

Menezes et. al. provide a thorough review of the field of cryptography. It's the first book I grab when I'm looking for something. Much more in depth than Bruce Scheier's "Applied Cryptography"

This is a fairly strong book on crypto, with heavy detail on the math involved. The upside is that the second chapter is devoted to most of the important mathematical theory you'll need to understand for the rest of the book. The downside? That chapter tries to cover just about the same breadth of information as a semester long course in Number Theory.

If you don't have a ton of mathematical background and are scared of having to take a crash course in number theory, or are looking for a higher level view of things, I'd suggest something more along the lines of Bruce Schneier's 'Applied Cryptography' (ASIN 0471117099). If you have some mathematical background, but want to get into things in detail, this is probably for you.

If you're not sure whether you'll like the book, you should definitely take a look at it. While Amazon currently doesn't have sample pages, if you do a Web Search on "Handbook of Applied Cryptography", you can find Sample Chapters hosted online to give you a good feel for the book's style.

A thorough coverage of topics in cryptography is only one of many features which make this book invaluable to computer scientists. While not intended to be a textbook, this handbook includes enough background information to be of use to those with minimal theoretical computer science knowledge. The chapter organization is logical and very modular so that after reading the introductory chapters, one can skip ahead to the chapters of interest with little difficulty.
The second chapter provides a concise review of probability theory, information theory, complexity theory, and number theory. This chapter would be helpful to anyone in computer science who already has some discrete math background. For readers with no discrete math background I would recommend first reading "Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications" by Kenneth Rosen, the editor of the series this book belongs to.
The coverage of number-theoretic problems in chapter 3 is very easy to follow and provides a handy reference to the average case performance of the best known algorithms for each.
The next few chapters are very math-intensive and outline the most common encryption algorithms and standards with examples. The chapter on block ciphers includes a section on classical ciphers and cryptanalysis which, as a sidenote, might be of interest to students of linguistics.
The later chapters present protocols for authentication, digital signing, and key management which build on the algorithms of the previous chapters, but can be understood independently.
One of the final chapters presents methods of effecient computation which again would be useful to anyone in computer science, not just those who are interested in cryptography.
Overall, the development of the topics in the book is complete (although by no means rigorous) and concise, including examples only where necessary. I highly recommend this book to students who want to learn more about cryptography, anyone whose job requires some knowledge of standards for authentication, digital signing, etc., such as internet security, and any computer scientist who has an academic interest in algorithms and their applications.

This book provides what is probably the best, up to date survey of the field. The book is more academically rigourous than Bruce' Applied Cryptography but may be rather tough going for those wanting a more introductory book. On the other hand the price is substantially greater.

If you want to learn about the number theory behind public key cryptography this book provides the best roadmap.

This book is a wonderful reference for any student or professional seriously interested in cryptography. The book is intended for people people who already have a strong background in math and/or computer science; the faint of heart should steer clear. For a chattier introduction, refer to Schneier's "Applied Cryptography."

If you want more information than you can possibly absorb about number theory this is the book to get. Everything from the basics of understanding number theory to testing for prime numbers, it's all here. You need a university degree to appreciate everything that's in this book, but definitely worth the money as a reference item.

The Chapter 14 - Efficient Implementation - shows several multiple precision algorithms. They are very easy to understand and implement under any microprocessor. It is a very good complement to the book set written by Donald Knuth (The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set), another fantastic traditional reference.

The book is thorough and complete, but it is written in the style of academia, where simple things are explained to exhaustion and complex or subtle ideas are often given a single sentence or are simply left to be inferred by the reader.

I have read a few book on cryptography and this is by far the best book I have read. If you have never taken a course on discrete math this book does a great job at explaining some of the topics. If you think you may need a book to help with the discrete math I would also recomend "Concrete Mathematics : A Foundation for Computer Science" by Ronald Graham and others.
"Handbook of Applied Cryptography" takes you from basic number function to public key encryptions, I highly recomend it!