As with all of Stallings' books, this is top notch for intro and advanced.

books:


	• Cryptography and Network Security (4th Edition) William Stallings Prentice Hall, 2005 - 592 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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up to date on using cryptography

Stallings presents an updated education on cryptography. With a secondary emphasis on network security. In the cryptographic sections, there is a strong mathematical flavour. The narrative is not a high level, management-type discussion. It favours the professional mathematician and programmer, and ideally the intersection of these two skill sets.

Unlike some other books on cryptography, here considerable space is also given to hash functions. These can sometimes be used as an alternative to a full encrypt/decrypt approach. If you are designing a system, you should ponder carefully whether a hashing approach might suffice. Usually if you only need to authenticate a message or item. Since, as the book relates, for all the complexity of the various hash algorithms, hashing is far simpler and faster than public key encryption. And there is no problem with key revocation. Another great simplification.

The book covers the latest work on hashing. It appears that the 160 bit hash methods, like SHA-1, can now have collisions induced, as found by researchers at Tsinghua University. (Though the text doesn't appear to credit them.) Suggesting a migration to longer bit methods or to a more intricate method.

One surprising feature of this 4th edition is that PKI is mentioned here, unlike earlier editions. PKI has been around long enough and is important enough that I would've thought the 3rd edition of the book would have covered it.

The last sections of the book, on network and system security, are less mathematical. But to offset this, as it were, they require somewhat of a background in understanding the Internet Protocol and in the systems administration of a subnet of computers. Maybe the simplest advice to understand and implement is for a sysadmin to install and regularly run a password checker against the users' passwords.

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As with all of Stallings' books, this is top notch for intro and advanced.

I am using this book for a Graduate class. William Stallings always has been very thorough yet easy to read. You can see his dedication to any of his technical books by visiting his website. Very highly recommended.

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Not outstanding

OK, this book has received prizes and stellar reviews here and elsewhere but personally I didn't like it very much. First, the text and the exercises lack mathematical depth. There are entire chapters, such as the one on AES, which add hardly anything to the official standard, and the book explanation is often harder to understand, and especially more ambiguous than the official standard of the protocols it is supposed to explain.
On the other hand, it is a relatively "polished" book, without too many errors or typos. Most of the time, it gives gives enough information to implement the algorithms it talks about. But it certainly doesn't give you enough to become a cryptographer, or to evaluate the security of a new algorithm, or things like that.

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In this age of viruses and hackers, of electronic eavesdropping and electronic fraud, security is paramount. This solid, up-to-date tutorial is a comprehensive treatment of cryptography and network security is ideal for self-study. Explores the basic issues to be addressed by a network security capability through a tutorial and survey of cryptography and network security technology. Examines the practice of network security via practical applications that have been implemented and are in use today. Provides a simplified AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) that enables readers to grasp the essentials of AES more easily. Features block cipher modes of operation, including the CMAC mode for authentication and the CCM mode for authenticated encryption. Includes an expanded, updated treatment of intruders and malicious software. A useful reference for system engineers, programmers, system managers, network managers, product marketing personnel, and system support specialists.

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