By Kurt Seifried, [email protected], Copyright Kurt Seifried
There are several excellent books on cryptography and it's various applications (and many books that are not so excellent). The following list is (generally speaking) books I either own, or have read myself.
Title: Applied
Cryptography, Second Edition
Author: Bruce Schneier
ISBN: 0-471-11709-9
Overview: An excellent book that covers most everything you would
ever want to know about cryptographic algorithms and general
issues surrounding them. If you have to buy one book I would
recommend this one.
Title: Basic Methods
of Cryptography
Author: C. A. Van Der Lubbe
ISBN: 0-521-55559-0
Overview: Do not let the title mislead you, this book actually
covers a variety of cryptographic techniques in depth and gives a
great amount of detail about DES. This book is not for the faint
of heart, but even if your math skills are lacking the various
explanations of cryptographic techniques and authentication
schemes is very educating.
Title:
IPSec, The new security standard for the Internet, Intranets, and
Virtual Private Networks
Author: Naganand Doraswamy and Dan Harkins
ISBN: 0-13-011898-2
Overview: A comprehensive book on the IPSec protocol and it's
components (such as AH, ESP and so on). It doesn't really cover
any implementation (the current clients and servers are evolving
quite quickly) which is no great loss.
Title: The Puzzle Palace
Author: James Bamford
ISBN: 0-14-006748-5
Overview: This book doesn't actually cover cryptography per se,
but is about the NSA (national Security Agency), an American
governmental agency with arguably the biggest pool of
cryptographic expertise in the world. It also a lot of the
history in and around American cryptographic laws.