Reading Resources

While there are several good books on cryptography by now (see below), none of them covers the material precisely in the manner/order that I will present it. The closest are the following excellent books:

• Introduction to Cryptography, by Jonathan Katz and Yehuda Lindell. This book is more introductory, and I recommend that you purchase this book.

• Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography, by Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup (book in progress). There is the latest pdf file at the bottom of the page. It requires secure access. The user name is crypto. I will tell the password in class. This book is more advanced.

Additionally, your other main reference should be the up-to-date

• Lecture Notes for Fall 2008 class

While the above notes will only include the up-to-date material, they are modified versions of the

• Lecture Notes for Fall 2006 class

So feel free to consult these older noted to see what we will likely cover next. Here are some other resources you might find useful. Please consult me for further recommendation.

1. Mihir Bellare and Shafi Golwasser, Lecture Notes on Cryptography. A very good set of notes. The quality is not uniform, though. Some important topics are covered in too much detail, the others are almost ignored. Still, I recommend this to supplement the notes above.

2. O. Goldreich, Foundations of Cryptography. This is a wonderful site intended for a more serious reader. It contains a lof of useful information treated in a rigorous and formal manner. In particular, it points to a three-volume book on ``Foundations of Cryptography''. The first two volumes are already out, and I recommend on buying them (from Cambridge University Press) if you are seriously interested in cryptography. However, this book is a bit dense for the level of this class.

3. A. Menezes, P. Van Oorschot and S. Vanstone, Handbook of applied Cryptography (Free Electronically!). This book is quite complete, and focuses more on applications. Again, very useful if you are seriously into cryptography, but might overwhelm you.

4. Serge Vaudenay, A Classical Introduction to Cryptography. Preety good modern book. More geared towards practical applications, lacking some theory.

5. Wenbo Mao, Modern Cryptography: Theory and Practice. More geared towards public-key cryptography, very little symmetric-key cryptography. Relatively modern treatment, but informal at times.

6. H. Delfs and H. Knebl, Introduction to Cryptography. Not bad, but also non-uniform, and the order of topics is not ideal.

7. D. Stinson, Cryptography, Theory and Practice (third edition). Some good stuff of early cryptography and information-theoretic authentication, but other treatment is not very modern.

8. B. Schneier, Applied Cryptography (second edition). Very useful referece for practical cryptography. Great summary of (by then) current algorithms and standards. Not a good first textbook though.

9. W. Stallings, Cryptography and Network Security (third edition). Good mix of theory and practice, not ideal for this course though.

Other Handouts

Sometimes I might point you to various on-line lecture notes, or possibly hand out alternative lecture notes in class (e.g., when we study Number Theory). These will be listed in the Handouts section on the class web site.

Last modified: September 2, 2008