Customer Reviews

Introduction to Modern Cryptography: Principles and Protocols (Chapman & Hall/CRC Cryptography and Network Security Series)

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I used this book for a course on modern cryptography held by Prof. Persiano of the University of Salerno, Italy.
I read, consulted, and studied other books about cryptography, but 'INTRODUCTION TO MODERN CRYPTOGRAPHY' by Katz and Lindell is in my humble opinion THE BEST.
The book has a theoretical flavor, it is mathematically rigorous, but it is very readable and fluent, and presents the motivating discussions beneath each topic.
The book is fully self-contained, and gives the necessary background for each topic (for example there is a lot of basic computational number theory necessary for introducing the topic of 'public key').
The beauty of the book is in that the authors don't present a collection of protocols, with no links each other, but the flow is sequential and motivated (in contrast to books which present topics only for filling the pages).
All the theorems are proved and the treatment is rigorous, but the theory is developed from scratch, and the book is oriented to beginner students, though it presents also advanced stuff and is one of the most advanced book for beginners.
The main contents of the book are:

1) Perfect security and Shannon's theorem (information theoretic security)
2) Computational security, indistinguishability, CPA
3) Pseudorandomness
4) One-way functions, hard-core predicate, Levin's theorem
5) Message Authentication Codes
6) Costructions of Pseudorandom objects, AES, Substitution-Permutation networks
7) Relation between Private-Key, one-way functions and pseudrandomness.
8) Number theory for the cryptography
9) Computational number theory, factorization, square roots,discrete log,diffie-hellman problems
10) Public key, goldwasser-micali, el gamal, pallier, hybrid encryption, encryption schemes based on trapdoor permutations
11)Digital Signature Schemes
I wrote only some topics of the book following my taste, but the books contains much more.
The exercises left to the end of each chapters are good, and vary from easy to hard.
The book i read was in draft form, 320 pages long, but the final edition is about 500 pages long, cause addictional sections have been added.
Indeed in the introduction of my book the authors write that their planned to add to the final edition the following:

Elliptic curves
Sub-exponential factoring algorithms
The random oracle model and efficient cryptographic constructions
Protocols

Given that the final edition is 200 pages longer that my draft i think that these sections have been added.

I advice this book to everyone who wants start the study of modern cryptography from a theoretic and rigorous point of view.
After you read Katz and Lindell i suggest you to read "Foundations of Cryptography" by Goldreich, but it is too advanced and its reading requires you already read Katz and Lindell.

If you are looking for a book that will facilitate self learning in cryptography then this is the right book. It helps you understand the concepts easily and has a good number of exercise problems that will help you through your concepts.

This is a fantastic book, it was mandatory reading as part of my Masters in Information Security. I found it invaluable in understanding this seemingly 'mind-bending' subject.

I've bought numerous books on Crypto - however, this is the only one I've found that gets the balance between the maths and core principles/motivations spot on! I can't recommend this book enough, IMHO it's essential reading if you're pursuing a career in Information Security.

I just finished a course in cryptography with this as the textbook, and I'm very pleased with it. I feel as though it strikes a good balance between rigor and clarity, especially in the exposition of basic abstract algebra and number theory. I am starting an extended research project in cryptography next semester, and this book will be a valuable resource for me.

It was very nice to see how security would be possibly defined in a sense different from (and more relaxed than) information-theoretic secrecy. It was nice to see how different definitions would lead to different levels of security, or in other words, each definition gives a guarantee of security against a certain class of real-life security threats (or attacks) and takes also into account very practical issues like dealing with computationally bounded adversaries. Moreover, introducing the notion of security using those definitions made the whole setting, not only mathematically rigorous, but also coherent, structured, and well-founded, without losing contact with practical concerns and real-life scenarios. Even more, this setting gave a neat and mathematically sound way to attain a proven notion of security rather than just introducing or suggesting schemes that show "good" performance in practice without being able to say anything, or quantify the security they provide on a more fundamental level. Another thing I also liked very much and is related to the point above, is how the book moves on to the point where it was shown that the provable security of almost (if not all) the encryption schemes (either private-key or public-key based) as well as authentication codes and signature schemes is based on the corner stone assumption of existence of one-way functions (one-way permutations). It was very elegant the way a one-way function (permutation) was defined and the way it is used to prove security in one sense or the other. It fits in very well in the development of the theory and made the whole structure very homogeneous. That is why Chapter 6, in my opinion, was one of the most important chapters that set the foundations of attaining provable security and build the bridge between assumptions and theory (one-way functions and hardcore predicates) on one side and practice on the other (pseudo-random generators and pseudo-random functions).Finally, public-key encryption schemes and digital signatures are also, definitely, on my long favorites list of this book. It was very exciting and intellectually stimulating to read how these schemes work and how they are (or most of them at least) shown to be secure in one sense or the other (i.e., attaining provable security ). Actually, it was useful to me to know all these practical issues related to these schemes like implementation and design issues of El Gamal and the (padded) RSA schemes, as well as the practical considerations that set many differences between private and public key encryption schemes. The same is also true with digital signatures. Also, discussing various real-life attacks (especially those against schemes that are widely used in cryptographic standards like the padded RSA and El Gamal schemes) was a very important ingredient that made the whole material in this book interesting and very engaging.

Until the present moment, I did not receive this product yet. It was supposed to get it on April 16.