Customer Reviews

The Twofish Encryption Algorithm: A 128-Bit Block Cipher

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This is the official discription of the Twofish encryption algorithm by the people that developed it. The book gives the direct discription of what they have done, *PLUS* the reasons behind the choices that they made, and the considerations that were involved. The book has a readable style, and covers this algorithm in greater detail than I've ever seen one covered before. This book is a must for anyone planning to implement the algorithm.

This book assumes that you know something of Cryptography, it would not be a good introduction to that topic. (However the main author's book "Applied Cryptography" serves that function well)

Bruce Schneier is the Yoda of crpytography and information security, if you've heard him there's no need to ask anyone else. This book would probably only appeal to the genuinely avid crypto fan, its Greek to anyone else. It is a thorough exposition of the making of the Twofish cypher, the latest attempt to secure information as absolutely as possible. You must be well versed in cryptography to get anything out of the work.

This book is not a how-to-do thing. You will learn why this cypher was created, how it was created it all the details. Not an introductory book. But very worth to who ever want to enter modern applied cryptographic field.

The back cover promises "Step-by-step instructions on how to use it in your systems." This is why I bought the book. However, there are only a handful of pages on "Using Twofish", and none of them have anything like a step-by-step howto.

In case you've been asleep for the past few years, the AES competition is over. Rijndael won, two-fish lost. End of story. This book serves only as a historical artifact depicting Schneier's failed attempt at lasting fame and glory.

Listen to the *real* crypto experts (i.e. the AES judges) and stick with the solution that they've chosen.

The source code in this book is an ungodly mess that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It is a mish-mash of poorly explained macros and pre-processor directives. It would take a divine miracle to get the source to compile (Scheier neglects to go into the details of how to do a build, he just throws the source code at you and expects you to figure it out). Perhaps, then, it's no surprise why team-Schneier lost AES.

This book was just PR for the AES competition. Now that it's over, the only thing this book is good for is to prop a door open.