Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Cryptography, Second Edition (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Readers should not be turned away from this book due to the rigorous mathematical content. If one learns the mathematical background (well developed in the text), then understanding of the cryptographic material becomes easier. Readers who only want "plain English' instead of mathematics betray their aversion to mathematics and point to the problem today with trying to teach cryptography. It cannot be effectively done without a rigorous mathematical background. This book does that and much more. Check out the biographical data in the text as well numerous other features.

If you really want to learn cryptology, this is the book.
If you just want to know the superficial concept of it, then,
this is not the book for you.
Mathematics used in this book is very concise and clear.
This book also has the complete answers for many exercise
problems (not just short answer). The answers for exercise
problems are well written with the full explanations. Well done!! I really enjoy reading this book.

This is a textbook designed for a one semester undergraduate course in cryptography. This makes it seem a little tamer than what it is. Crypto buffs will enjoy it, and there is little here than is not in some other advanced texts. What is of value is a section on RIJNDAEL, the new advanced encryption standard.
Useful as a starting point but not as easy to follow as some other texts. You better like this stuff already or you shouldn't dive into this book.

Only those who fear learning even some moderate math in order to learn
the crypto data will not like this book. The payoff is big time with
historical bios of people to fill in the background, symmetric-key and
public-key cryptosystems covered in full, and the facts on primality
testing and factoring to gear up for the advanced topics which are
superb. We even get to learn about quantum crypto. This book just makes me
want to learn more about the subject. I'd recommend it to all but those
who think you can learn crypto without math and who are only interested
in learning how to cryptanalyze algorithms. For them there are many
otherwise useless books out there. This is for those who really want to
learn about crypto and enjoy it in the process!

I had to use this book for cryptography class, and would not recommend it to anyone. The book was very math intensive, which I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the fact that there are no explanations in plain english to follow the math. This book is basically just a bunch of theorems and proofs. Also, there is no cryptanalysis of any of the algorithms included. There are much better books out there, I don't know why anyone would want to get this one.