Best web encryption books according to redditors
We found 130 Reddit comments discussing the best web encryption books. We ranked the 16 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 130 Reddit comments discussing the best web encryption books. We ranked the 16 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
![Nomenclatura - Encyclopedia of modern Cryptography and Internet Security: From AutoCrypt and Exponential Encryption to Zero-Knowledge-Proof Keys [Paperback]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51RCLqOp4TL.jpg)
Simon Singh explains.
edit: Hey, I didn't expect this to become the top comment. Neat. Might as well abuse it, by providing bonus material:
This is the same Simon Singh discussed in this recent and popular Reddit post; he is a superhero of science popularization. He has written some excellent and highly rated books:
(full disclosure: I have nothing to disclose, other than that I'm a fan of his work.)
The movie is okay as a movie, but as as far as historical value goes, it's more in the 'inspired by' category. They touch upon a few of the moments and ideas presented here, however.
For a more (and way more interestingly brought) in depth explanation, I can recommend 'The Code Book' by Simon Singh (amazon)
> creating a strong cryptography algorithm is primarily trial and error
I don't think it's trial and error, more like a series of steps in which each is designed to befuddle a particular class of attack that may have been successful on previous iterations. This sort of goes back to the Cold War and even WWII—a code like Enigma was the scramblers and the plugboard, where the plugboard was specifically added to foil a type of dictionary attack.
Anyhow, not that I really know too much about it, but this is a fantastic book on the topic.
Computational Number Theory and Modern Cryptography.
If that interests you, you should read The Code Book by Simon Singh. Great history of cryptography with a lot of well explained examples. He also wrote a great book about Fermat's Last Theorem.
I am also fairly new to the subject. The first book I read on it was The Code Book by Simon Singh. I highly recommend it.
It was written in 1999, and is not an up-to-date, hands-on resource for encryption software. It is more of a primer on the history and evolution of codes and encryption, with great explanations of the foundations of the psychology and mathematics of codes. It's well written, a fun read, and very informative for beginning studies.
I hope it's ok in this sub to post a link to it. It's a non-affiliate Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
If you want to pick up some Cryptography, The Code Book is a great intro.
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning is good for learning to learn.
The Pragmatic Programmer is good for project code planning and learning how to write code in a well thought out way.
Ethernet: The Definitive Guide is a good read if you want to get up to snuff on your networking, though it can be a bit dry at times.
If you're looking for a book that teaches you about codes and practical codebreaking, here are two greats: Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and Their Solution, by Helen Fouché Gaines and Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing, by Martin Gardner.
For a historical look try The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, by Simon Singh. I really loved that one!
I've read a few books about WW2 tech and I can't remember exactly which one talked about it - it may have been Alan Turing: The Enigma, or perhaps Simon Singh's The Code Book. I tried searching online but I can't find anything for some reason :/ I hope whichever book wrote about it didn't make it up.
Though not really geared to compsci, The Code Book is a great history of cryptography and cryptanalysis from the dawn of time to current. Excellent read.
I highly recommend "The Code Book" to any novices interested in this sort of thing, it's readable and entertaining without being insulting or excessively complex.
Anyone interested in this topic should read the codebook. As I remember the polish were the first to crack it, but after improvements of the enigma system they didn't have the resources to crack it anymore. The British built upon the polish success and threw lots of money and talent at it such that they could crack all oncoming versions - with the exception of the German navy that used the best version of Enigma (and had better practices in place).
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography is excellent if you’re interested in this stuff. It takes you through the history of encryption and explains everything well.
Here are some resources I've found especially helpful for my own puzzle-making and codebreaking endeavors.
General Overviews and Websites for Getting Started:
Basic Cryptanalytic Techniques:
Beginner Hand-cracking Tutorials:
Tools for Creating and Cracking Codes Quickly:
Interesting Cryptographic Puzzles/Methods for Inspiration:
Books for Learning:
Books for Puzzle Solving:
Games:
EDIT: Fixed a link and made a couple minor touch-ups.
Some good readings from the University of Cambridge Mathematical reading list and p11 from the Studying Mathematics at Oxford Booklet both aimed at undergraduate admissions.
I'd add:
Prime obsession by Derbyshire. (Excellent)
The unfinished game by Devlin.
Letters to a young mathematician by Stewart.
The code book by Singh
Imagining numbers by Mazur (so, so)
and a little off topic:
The annotated turing by Petzold (not so light reading, but excellent)
Complexity by Waldrop
I post this because this is the money system of a libertarian society, and we might have to think about some solutions to the problems he's outlining here. Also, this isn't just some ignorant NY Times reporter, this is the guy that wrote the book on cryptography. Applied Cryptography was, and still is, one of the first books people recommend on cryptographic protocols, so it seems like a good idea to consider what he has to say on the subject.
If you're at all interested in encryption, The Code Book is a great place to start.
The Code Book, which is a nonfiction book about the history and mathematics of secret codes and how to break them, ranging from the earliest and simplest codes, up through the Engima machine and the first computers, through modern RSA, PGP, and (the hypothetically unbreakable) Quantum Cryptography.
Cracking the Coding Interview: More to help you get a job as a Software Engineering, but full of fun problems even if you do them just for the challenge and learning.
The Code Book: A great overview of the history of Cryptography.
For classical cryptography, check out https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/military-cryptanalysis/
https://www.amazon.ca/Elementary-Cryptanalysis-Mathematical-Abraham-Sinkov/dp/0883856220
https://www.amazon.ca/Cryptanalysis-Study-Ciphers-Their-Solution/dp/0486200973
It might be a rebranding of one of those. Alternatively, email one of the technical consultants for the movie and ask them.
The Code Book for a primer on the basics up through some simple explanations of modern computer cryptography and the Handbook of Applied Cryptography for serious math proofs of a lot of the modern crypto standards in use today.
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
This book is great. I read it a number of years ago and couldn't get enough.
I first heard about the french 'La disparition' and the translated 'A Void' in The Code Book by Simon Singh (which in itself is a great book) in the chapter describing frequency analysis with regard to cryptanalysis. [With 'e' being the most frequently used letter in english.]
If you want background reading about the history try 'the code book' http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323 I found it really interesting when I first read it, It is easy to read and got me interested in the subject.
a book like this one is good: http://www.schneier.com/book-applied.html for a general treatment.
It's really Comp Sci, but I really enjoyed The Code Book. Goes over secret codes over time, starting with the basics, ends with Cryptography, goes over some of Alen Turing's work. Over all a good, fascinating read.
Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier.
Yes it's older, but it will get you up to speed with the concepts.
I think the book really is the gold standard when it comes to introducing cryptography. I read it cover-to-cover in 1999 and it really explains everything well. I used encryption software before that, but this explains how it all works.
Everyday Cryptography
If you enjoy Simon Singh, check out The Code Book.
Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/topics/enigma
Movie: The imitation game
Book : Simon Singh - The Code Book
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323/ref=mp_s_a_1_2/138-6683061-6847431?ie=UTF8&qid=1541615715&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=simon+singh&dpPl=1&dpID=51CC3yLf5mL&ref=plSrch
is it this one?
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
In addition to illusory script and other magical solutions (possibly even layered on top of them for added security), check out some historical spy stuff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
I also really recommend The Code Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323/
These might interest you:
Poincare's Prize
Prime Obsession
Fermat's Enigma
The Code Book
You mention a diverse set of topics, and you're probably not going to find any one book that covers all of them.
For algorithms for cryptography, signatures, protocols, etc. the definitive go to (last I checked) was still Schneier's Applied Cryptography.
For a history of cryptography, I'm fond of Kahn's The Codebreakers, but be forewarned that it is a large book.
For Network Security and Information Assurance concepts, I like Anderson's Security Engineering, but the state of the art changes so rapidly that it's difficult to recommend a book.
I found this book to be excellent:
https://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Cryptography-Fundamental-Principles-Applications/dp/0199695598/
I have a strong programming background but not such a strong maths background. I found the book to be technical (explaining the different ciphers, different modes, etc) without dwelling on the maths. The first section seemed a little slow but I was glad that I read it because it was all relevent later on
Simon Singh's book is fantastic. It was one of my early reads in the field of crypto. I read it when I was in middle school so I don't think it would be too techy for you! But it covers a ton of topics, including topics that will be relevant into the future. So in short: yes, buy it.
EDIT: It occurred to me that I read one of Simon's earlier works, I think it's part of the same series? Anyway, my recommendation is: https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
> I have zero Linux experience. How should I correct this deficiency?
First, install a VM (Oracle OpenBox is free) and download a linux ISO and boot from it. Debian and Ubuntu are two of my favorites. Both are totally free (as are most linux distros). Once installed, start reading some beginner linux tutorials online (or get "Linux In A Nutshell" by O'Reilly).
Just fuck around with it... if you screw something up, blow it away and reinstall (or restore from a previous image)
> Is it necessary? Should I start trying to make Linux my primary OS instead of using windows, or should that come later?
It's not necessary, but will help you learn faster. A lot of security infrastructure runs on Linux and UNIX flavors. It's important to have at least a basic understanding of how a Linux POSIX system works.
> If you can, what are some good books to try to find used or on PDF to learn about cissp and cisa? Should I be going after both? Which should I seek first?
You don't need to worry about taking & passing them until you've been working in the field for at least 3-5 years, but if you can get some used review materials second-hand, it'll give you a rough idea what's out there in the security landscape and what a security professional is expected to know (generally)
CISSP - is more detailed and broader and is good if you're doing security work day-to-day (this is probably what you want)
CISA - is focused on auditing and IT governance and is good if you're an IT Auditor or working in compliance or something (probably not where you're headed)
> What are good books I can use to learn about networking? If you noticed I ask for books a lot its because the only internet I have is when I connect my android to my laptop by pdanet, and service is sketchy at my apartment.
O'Reilly is a reliable publisher of quality tech books. An amazon search for "O'Reilly networking" pull up a bunch. Also, their "in a nutshell" series of books are great reference books for Windows, Linux, Networking, etc... You can probably find older/used copies online for a decent price (check ebay and half.com too)
> How would you recommend learning about encryption? I just subscribed to /r/crypto so I can lurk there. Again, can you point me at some books?
Try "The Code Book" for a very accessible intro to crypto from ancient times thru today
http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
Also, for basics of computer architecture, read "CODE", which is absolutely excellent and shows how computers work from the ground up in VERY accessible writing.
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319
Reverse Code Engineering. Down the rabbit hole you go!
I'm not sure how to tell you where to start with cryptography. For the kind of stuff they've been doing so far in the footers, it's enough to just understand binary numbering. The rest is mostly intuition.
The Caesar cipher is an example of a shift cipher, which in turn is a subset of the broader category of substitution ciphers. You should probably familiarize yourself with how to use frequency analysis to break classic substitution ciphers. The next major evolution of ciphers was the vigenere cipher. During WWI, Germany used the ADFGVX. Even now, breaking it is not trivial if the key is sufficiently long.
On the modern, digital side of things, encryption algorithms generally fall into two categories: block ciphers (ex. AES, DES, Blowfish, etc.) and stream ciphers. You should probably learn what hashing algorithms are (ex. MD5, SHA-1). If you want to crack hashes these days, you'll want to know about rainbow tables.
If you're looking for a good laymen's introduction, I recommend The Code Book by Simon Singh.
Though strictly factual, Simon Singh's The Code Book can at best of times be read as a good spy novel, just based on real historical facts. A very interesting read nonetheless!
Based on some of your responses to other answers, it seems like you want to know a lot more about encryption than just the keys: TLS for instance is a protocol for initiating an encrypted session, and has little to do with your original question directly. Applied Cryptography is an excellent and authoritative source, but I’d also recommend the shorter, more concise “Cryptography ” from the Very Short Introduction series for beginners. But in short:
A symmetric key is a specific constant applied to a message with a encryption algorithm. Say we take the ASCII decimal value of each letter in the message “The Eagle has landed” => [84, 104, 101, 32, 69, 97, 103, 108, 101, 32, 104, 97, 115, 32, 108, 97, 110, 100, 101, 100]. The algorithm (we call it the cipher, here) is to multiply each character by “x” to encrypt the message; to decrypt the message we divide by “x”. In this case, the value of “x” is the key.
An asymmetric key is different in that it is a one-way operation. Here, “x” is broken into two parts, and where encryption takes place with one part, you need the other to decrypt. By encrypting the message, you make the message practically unrecoverable without the private key. This is effected in many encryption schemes by using a modulus, which is the operation such that “1 x n mod 3 = 1, 2 x n mod 3 = 2, and 3 x n mod 3 = 0”. The idea being, if counting an ordered set of numbers to whatever, every time you count up to the modulus value, wrap around again and continue from 0. One of the most basic asymmetric operations that works this way is using the modulus 33, where one part of the key is 3 and the other 7; let the public key be (33, 3) and the private key be (33, 7).
As before, we take the message and encrypt it with an algorithm. In this case however, our algorithm is the ascii value of the char to the power of the public key, modulo 33, or (where ‘c’ is the character value), c^3 mod 33. This gives us [24, 26, 8, 32, 27, 25, 31, 3, 8, 32, 26, 25, 4, 32, 3, 25, 11, 1, 8, 1] for the message. Notice that you can’t invert this algorithm — a modulus can’t be “reversed” by any means mathematically. What you can do though is apply the same algorithm with the other key, “7”, and this will result in the original. A short proof of this can be found here.
Since it’s the same operation, note that you can use either 3 or 7 as your public key — the choice of which is public and which is private is arbitrary.
When discussing protocols like TLS, this is instead specifying how to set up an encrypted channel for communication, which often involves an initial stage of passing messages using a combination of symmetric and asymmetric keys to establish a secure line of communication, with an initial, temporary key created on-the-fly for that particular session, and which is thrown away following each “block” of messages. Since this gets outside of your original question, I won’t go into it here.
If you want an interesting history of cyptography, read Simon Singh's The Code Book
You can write perfect encryption by hand using a One Time Pad. It requires exactly zero high level mathmatics. The reason it isn't used as often as other encryption methods is that it requires an exchange of keys each time it is used.
The Code Book by Simon Singh has a nice section on the Enigma machine and at least some of how it was cracked. It's a little simplified but not significantly*. I took a course years ago that went really in depth on cracking Enigma by hand, and it used Singh's book as the main textbook for that part with a lot of additional handouts that I don't have any more.
* Different branches of the gov't and military had different Enigmas, and some really were more complicated and way harder to crack. The "standard" army one is basically like Singh describes, although he assumes that the inner wirings of the rotors are known. In fact Rejewski had to figure that out too, and though that also used cycle structures, it's much more technical.
Start here:
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
For a thriller treatment of infections diseases, the following are a nice read
I'm inclined to also suggest the works of Simon Singh, to whom I was introduced by his book on math and cryptography - The Code Book. But he has also written about cosmology and "alternative" medicine. The later got him involved in a landmark libel lawsuit in the UK. For that reason, there is probably more than the usual bit of politics you'd expect in a popular science book. However, in the post-truth era of Donald Trump and company, that maybe fitting if bitter medicine.
Edit: As someone who may not have the best scientific background, one might be prone to confuse science with pseudoscience. Even today, there is no shortage of low quality literature on UFOs and parapsychology. As such, Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is highly recommended.
Just started reading, maybe it's elsewhere in the thread but Simon Singh's THE CODE BOOK is a fascinating read. For a popular audience, but enough basics to get you thinking the right way. EDIT: yep, there it is 2 lines down. sorry. Posted a link for the lazy, anyways.
I don't think either of these will help you become good at problem solving except on a very high conceptual level. Traditional games like those you mention are the inverse of programming. In traditional games you have a fixed measure of success, fixed legal moves, and a finite number of states. In programming you have a nebulous measure of success, an infinite number of things you can solve and an infinite number of states.
If you want to study games, look at them from a high level. What makes them the same? What makes them different? Are there strategies that transcend single games and apply to many?
You can also look for problems that are more open or look deeper into everyday things. Math proofs are a good example, think back to geometry and try to construct simple but sound proofs on your own. Try some problems on Project Euler. Read The Code Book and try to break some ciphers. Look at the objects you come across every day, ask yourself "why does this work the way it does?" and think through all the ramifications (here's one: why do stairwells have a swinging door on the first floor?) Look at the processes you have day to day, how could they be improved? How would you improve them?
Everything you ever wanted to know about cryptography (but not necessarily all cryptographic algorithms) is in Practical Cryptography. If that doesn't fill your cup, then put on your big-boy pants and dive into Applied Cryptography. You will note that Brian Schneier is a common author between those two books. There is a reason for that. :-)
I really recommend The Code Book by Simon Singh. Not only is it an amazing history of ciphers and codebreaking, but he gives a LOT of examples and practice material. There's some more challenges on his web site as well.
Depending on age, The Code Book is a very approachable history and introduction to cryptography.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Everyday-Cryptography-Fundamental-Principles-Applications/dp/0199695598
The Code Book. Very entertaining, too.
Yeah just don't buy it unless you really want to do and explore a lot of C programming. That said it was great for my systems programming class as a sort of reference. But as for attack/defense start looking into networking if you aren't familiar with it, and if you are network security then, of course, there is actual information security, what most people mean by crypto even though there is a lot more to it. For crypto, I'd recommend This but that's more an overview of what your crypto algorithms actually do.
I have tried paid services and they are very different from free ones, clearly.
Your best bet would be to use a combination of oxt.me. blockchair and walletexplorer.
Oxt.me - visualize transactions
Blockchair.com - a lot of transaction details
walletexplorer.com - basic clustering services. eases the discovery process, detects change of address, exchanges and other well known address.
Now if you want to de-anonimise (attribution) you have to do OSINT on top of that.
There are plenty of tools but most of them just do the same thing with slight variations. Choose the ones that work best for your use case.
I recommended you read
https://www.amazon.com/Investigating-Cryptocurrencies-Understanding-Extracting-Blockchain/dp/1119480582.
Be resilient.
You might want to check out this guy and his book aptly named the Code Book. I can't speak for it's authenticity and how accurate all the information is, being just an amateur, but it is quite interesting and gave me a nice overview of different secret message writing techniques. Worth a read.
If you like books and are interested in modern cryptography, "Serious Cryptography" was excellent. A more introductory text with historical context is "The Code Book".
I enjoyed Big Bang very much. I have also been recommended here another book by the same author: The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
Some search terms for how the internet works: Packet switched networking, TCP, IP, SSL.
I don't think I have ever read a book about basic internet workings, the internet is really the best place to read about that stuff (hence the search terms).
Instead I will list some books which look at how we define security and why secure systems fail:
Secrets and Lies is a good primer discussing trust / networks / cryptography and a few other things at a high enough level to be interesting to a lay reader: http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Lies-Digital-Security-Networked/dp/0471453803/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1419753343&sr=8-4
Art of Intrusion is packed full of stories about how systems (computers or otherwise) fail and become insecure: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Intrusion-Exploits-Intruders-Deceivers/dp/0471782661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419753466&sr=8-1 the sister book Art of Deception (stories about Social Engineering) is also pretty good.
The Code Book, mostly history, but provides a great introduction to cryptographic concepts. http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/0385495323/ref=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_7_RTJS?ie=UTF8&refRID=1RRWWY0RNX7G8HRYPFFS
Hi I'm not sure if these are the books you would enjoy, but I do have a couple of them in my pocket list:
Personally in recent years I'm interested in topics about algorithms/cryptology and economics, so The Code Book by Simon Singh, Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone, The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable by James Owen Weatherall, these are the ones of my all time favorite "history" books about math and science and their applications. : )
I can still come up with another (popular) book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, but I didn't really enjoy the book, guess I didn't agree some of the conclusions in that book. But maybe you would find it interesting. :)
Hope this helps! ☺️
try this?
https://www.amazon.com/Nomenclatura-Encyclopedia-Cryptography-Internet-Security/dp/3746066689
There are two basic types:
If you want to enjoy reading about encryption. checkout the book by Simon Singh: The Code Book
The Code Book was really good as well!
As soon as I looked at the image, the first thing that popped into my head was:
"Really useful chart to use against simple ciphers"
Have you read "The Code Book" [1]? Fantastic read :)
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323/
http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
The Code Book is exactly what you are looking for. Very fun read, very informative.
Somebody told me, so I'm telling you: The Code Book is where it's at. Very easy to read and understand and will answer your questions.
Off the top of my head:
The Psychopath Test is a wittily written personal study of detecting, treating and (possibly) rehabilitating psychopaths.
The Freakonomics books are written by both an economist and a journalist (so easy to read) and contain slightly left-of-centre economic theories with easy to follow research. These are excellent.
The Omnivores Dilemma is both engaging and though provoking. It's All about the production of food in the modern age. In particular, four different meals.
The Code Book is one of my all-time favourites. As the title suggests it's about all forms of cryptography. If you have a mathematical bent I also like Singh's book about Fermat's Enigma).
The cryptography course is the one I'm really excited about. I read the red book when I was like 19, and I've been waiting for that course ever since.
I'm also a big fan of Simon Singh's The Code Book because he included ten encoded messages at the end offering a prize to the first person to break them. It took over a year from the book's release for someone to solve them.
There's an interesting book about encryption that I read a few years ago that discusses exactly this. [The Code Book by Simon Singh] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/0385495323).
Anyone interested in encryption and how it has evolved should read this book. bobcobb42 is absolutely right, some of the modern encryption techniques such as RSA are near impossible to break if applied correctly. In RSA two very large (the larger the better) prime numbers are multiplied to encrypt data. As long as the prime numbers used to encrypt the data are kept secret then the process of finding those number and reversing the encryption would take many many powerful computers working many many years to break. The reason for this is because to find the original prime numbers that were multiplied to get they key very large numbers would have to be factored, which is very hard to do since their is currently no algorithm that is known to do this.
IIRC the government actually gave the inventors of RSA or Diffie-Hellman, one of the two, a really hard time over their encryption because they couldn't break it so they didn't want it public.
I've only just become interested in cryptography, thanks to all the NSA "news" I guess. So far, I'm really enjoying the book: Everyday Cryptography by Keith M. Martin!.
It is a nice intro, full of references and further reading and even has exercises to help you really understand the subject. It is light on math, so not for serious crypto-freaks I guess.
I quite enjoyed The Code Book by Simon Singh. It's a book on cryptography for the layman. Not really about computer science, per se, but it's fascinating and explains a lot about thinking algorithmically.
The Code Book by Simon Singh is a nice, informal introduction to cryptography including modern day cryptography.
I struggled through part of this and decided getting back into coding wasn’t going to be my thing. But it may be what you’re looking for.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0996025553/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1
ah, yeah they're sorta the same thing.
Two other ideas, if he's into books, If Hemingway Wrote Javascript is an awesome one -- he pairs up like, 100 famous authors with programming languages and writes programs as if he were the author.
Also, The Code Book is really cool too. A really interesting and in depth history of encryption.
The beginning of this video has a good explanation of how public/private key cryptography works, using the analogy of paint colors to show how one way functions make encryption like this possible. The math part is a little rushed, but the first half is a great visual aide.
I recommend reading The Code Book by Simon Singh if you're interested in the history of cryptography in general. The sections on the Enigma machine are fascinating.
RSA and public key cryptography in general are fascinating ideas, and do have tremendous applications to "real life". For an extremely approachable/readable book about cryptography I highly recommend Simon Singh's "The Code Book". It doesn't delve very deep into the technical mathematics of cryptography, but it does do a great job of understanding the basic evolution of codes. ciphers, and cryptography. I wrote my high school IB extended essay on the history of RSA and public key cryptography, and this book was a great source. Again, you would probably get better recommendations for topics if you specified your current grade/level.
From Applied Cryptography 1996
>One of the consequences of the second law of thermodynamics is that a certain amount of energy is necessary to represent information. To record a single bit by changing the state of a system requires an amount of energy no less than kT, where T is the absolute temperature of the system and k is the Boltzman constant. (Stick with me; the physics lesson is almost over.)
>Given that k = 1.38×10-16 erg/°Kelvin, and that the ambient temperature of the universe is 3.2°Kelvin, an ideal computer running at 3.2°K would consume 4.4×10-16 ergs every time it set or cleared a bit. To run a computer any colder than the cosmic background radiation would require extra energy to run a heat pump.
>Now, the annual energy output of our sun is about 1.21×1041 ergs. This is enough to power about 2.7×1056 single bit changes on our ideal computer; enough state changes to put a 187-bit counter through all its values. If we built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured all its energy for 32 years, without any loss, we could power a computer to count up to 2192. Of course, it wouldn't have the energy left over to perform any useful calculations with this counter.
>But that's just one star, and a measly one at that. A typical supernova releases something like 1051 ergs. (About a hundred times as much energy would be released in the form of neutrinos, but let them go for now.) If all of this energy could be channeled into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states.
>These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.
Don't know if anyone will see this now that it's Tuesday, but I'm looking for a recommendation for a book on the history of cryptography. Right now I've found The Codebreakers (expensive) and The Code Book. Does anyone have any experience with these books, or in the subject generally that can offer other suggestions? Thanks a ton.
No problem. I am a crypto nut. I love talking about this stuff! If you'd like to learn more about cryptography, then you should add this book to your wishlist and pray someone gets it for you! It follows the history of cryptography from its infancy to its present state of being and goes on to speculate about the nature of cryptography in the future. It's one of my all time favorite books!
What's the difference between this one and this one?
The Code Book by Simon Singh
This book is amazing...it started my love of cryptography and secrets....and taught me how behind the scenes these things have been shaping history in ways we don't always see.
If you want to know more about how Turing cracked the Enigma Machine, i suggest to read this really nice book :
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
Check out The Code Book by Simon Singh. It is about the history of cryptography, but along the way, it also has some history of computing, and it's an entertaining read.
William F. Friedman wrote 3 books on crypto that the NSA has declassified. These should be quite valuable to you:
EDIT: Check out Military Cryptanalytics too.
Imagine someone wants to send you a package and they want to lock it with a padlock. They could put the lock on the box and send it to you and then somehow they have to get you the key. They could send it separately or through some other secret means, but there is always the possibility that the key could be intercepted and copied. This method is secure but only if you can securely transmit the key. This is basically symmetric encryption.
Now, what if instead you manufactured thousands of locks but only one key that opened them all. You sent those locks out in to the world to everyone that might want to send you a package. Anytime someone wanted to send you a package they simply grab one of your locks, lock the box, and send it to you. No one else can open the lock and the key is never sent anywhere, you can keep it safe at your house. This is asymmetric encryption and the basis for most everything we have on the internet nowadays. The locks you manufacture and send out into the world are you 'public key', and the key you keep is your 'private key'. Obviously the details get into some math and particularly how you can make and equivalent of this key/lock analogy but with very large prime numbers.
If you're at all interested in the topic, read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
For those wanting to learn more about how this quantum photon based encryption came about, and much more, check out The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography.
Your Inner Fish
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
The Universe and Dr. Einstein
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
The Code Book by Simon Singh.
Amazing history and explanation of cryptography, all the way from ancient ciphers to theorized quantum stuff.
If they're REALLY bored and trapped, they'll figure out how to get here. They just need look at people's comments to surf to this post.
I've done a desultory look at it and am flummoxed. Also lazy; the letter patterns don't correspond to anything, so it's either single substitution plus nulls or transposition, pair substitution (seems likely; that's something that came up in a Sayer book and so should be moderately well known), or, well, a completely different thing. Pair substitution is unlikely since there's not enough code there to analyze.
So yeah; flummoxed.
You may already know that /r/codes/ is a thing.
I like The Code Book
I haven't read it before, but from the Amazon and Goodreads reviews, it looks like more of a history book with some intro to cod breaking math.
Textbooks and/or technical papers/tutorials would probably be a more useful intro to code breaking.
Two of my all time favorite math subjects: Linear Algebra and Number Theory.
My Number Theory professor actually wrote a textbook that I think you’d find is, generally speaking, pretty easy to follow and has some neat applications. Bear in mind though that he wrote it specifically to teach Number Theory at a University level so sometimes reading through some proofs may not be exactly clear. here is the libgen link, if you’d rather another source this is the amazon link to purchase or rent the book.
You will learn some cool techniques and patterns and things you (possibly) never even knew about numbers if you start studying Number Theory.
Now my linear algebra textbook I never actually used because my professor never required it but from what I hear it’s a good foundation but doesn’t expound much upon certain topics - idk if that’s true but I heard the author is a chill dude so here ya go
You can libgen that too.
I don’t exactly think studying calculus on your own will be too exciting, but if you do study calculus, you can then carry it over to other fields - like physics, which has a foundation in calculus from Isaac Newton. I don’t have a good reading source for introductory calculus.
For an excellent, easily accessible description of some of these codes and the work done to break them, I recommend The Code Book by Simon Singh. Amazon link
Read: Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier. Goes through implementation and attack details on several older algorithms, as well as all sorts of cool applications. It's an older book, but the older algorithms are easier to understand and start with.
Some pretty good reads on the subject:
Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing https://www.amazon.com/dp/0763629723/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_WF1Dub0WN55RY
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004IK8PLE/ref=aw_ss_kndl_dp/
Codebreaker: The History of Codes and Ciphers https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802715478/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_OH1Dub103RXB7
And, believe it or not,
Cracking Codes and Cryptograms For Dummies https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005CB22A8/ref=aw_ss_kndl_dp/
You also might check your local newspaper for "Cryptoquote." It's a daily quote that uses a different cipher each day. Great for practice!
Educate yourselves! Anybody know a better layman's book than The Code Book?
http://i.imgur.com/ICg0lMH.png
This book is a pretty good beginning on the topic.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
You can also find it online in pdf.
A quantum computer is able to but the bits of data that make up computer information into a superposition where the 0s and 1s at the same time and rapidly go bit by bit checking the combinations.
A quantum computer could break an RSA, SHA, etc encryption scheme but a quantum computer could also be able to create a cryptography scheme that uses the quantum computer and thus you'd wind up with a quantum computer trying to break quantum encryption.
This is a high level overview and if someone has extra time please add to it.
There was a really excellent section on exactly this in the code book if you're interested in some reading about it. But the book is more generally about the history of cryptography and codebreaking...
It went over a lot of the history of figuring out Egyptian hieroglyphs and one or two other ancient languages with little to no clues about their meaning and interpretation. Sorry I don't remember the specifics...
I found this book quite useful for explaining crypto and its practical applications in your everyday life.
I am a self-taught security guy so I was familiar with how things worked but this book really explained how they worked scientifically which I found awesome.
Edit:
Fixed link.
No idea if it's the book you're talking about, but The Code Book has a large section on the Enigma Code. It's a great layman's introduction to cryptology that goes through both the math and the history of several major cryptological innovations. I can't recommend it enough.
This one: https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
The Code Book - Read it for our digital security class in college.
Amazon Link
Although it is more of a story book than a textbook.
For what I can tell, it should be GD. They made an error. Not terribly uncommon. I made one in a geocache challenge and I was left wondering why nobody could find it. There is an excellent book on cryptography called "Codebreakers" that had a really fun cipher challenge but he goofed on the PKE and made it basically impossible to solve.
Books on project management, software development lifecycle, history of computing/programming, and other books on management/theory. It's hard to read about actual programming if you can't practice it.
Some of my favorites:
You can't exactly learn to program without doing, but hopefully these books will give you good ideas on the theories and management to give you the best understanding when you get out. They should give you an approach many here don't have to realize that programming is just a tool to get to the end, and you can really know before you even touch any code how to best organize things.
IF you have access to a computer and the internet, look into taking courses on Udacity, Coursera, and EDX. Don't go to or pay for any for-profit technical school no matter how enticing their marketing may tell you you'll be a CEO out of their program.
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
Thanks, spit334. I'd like to take the opportunity to recommend Simon Singh's The Code Book. Fascinating, and a great read. I have lent my copy to many friends over the years and it never fails to enthrall.
I picked up The Code Book from a used bookstore and let it sit on my shelf for about a year. It's a light history of cryptography from ancient times until modern, but for some reason I was afraid it would be too dense and math-heavy for me to understand. On the contrary, it's a very accessible introduction to the development of cryptography and entertaining examples from history, which sparked an interest in crypto that i've been planning to explore further.
Bingo. It's silly to get all up in arms about privacy when you can't even lock your own doors. Right now we're trying to enforce that we can, reliably, lock our door.
I suspect fingerprints (and perhaps in the future retinal) scans will make this better. You can create some nice entropy from a fingerprint, since they are very unique. You can also use that as half of your key with a password as dual authentication making you really freaking secure. BUT with a backdoor -- none of that matters, as they have access to decrypt it, or worse, install malicious software. Imagine the bot net you could create with iPhones alone.
To be fair, it's not unreasonable to call in their history.
Check out this link as a good starter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States
I'm not sure if you know much about crypto (I'm a huge crypto fan, especially of it's history). If you are ever interested -- check out this book: http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0385495323
It's a fantastic read.
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323/ref=nodl_
I purchased this book at the recommendation from a fellow raid secrets subscriber and I’m not huge fan of reading. Very cool book that goes thru the history of cryptography.
One I've recommended before for someone graduating is Cracking the Coding Interview. One other that's on my reading list is this book on the history of cryptography, I haven't read it yet but it looks fascinating.
Die zwarte markt bestaat al decennia, er is een mooi boek over geschreven waar ondermeer uit blijkt hoe dat wereldje al lange lange tijd bestaat een werkt.
Countdown to Zerodays
Daarnaast is de wens van de overheid begrijpelijk (zij moeten een veilig bestaan voor hun burgers garanderen, en met de terroristische dreiging, is dat heel moeilijk. en is dit een voor de hand liggende wens (want dat konden ze altijd al)
Echter is de volgende vorm van versleuteling onbreekbaar. Zodra deze gebroken is, verandert het bericht en heeft de ontvanger het direct door. het heet quantum encryptie.
De geschiedenis van encryptie, van het begin in Egypte mede langs kraken van de Duitste enigma machine in WOII, eindigend bij quantum encryptie is erg leuk beschreven in:
The Code Book