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December 11, 2007

Handbook of Applied Cryptography Online

The Handbook of Applied Cryptography is now available online -- legitimately. This is a good book, and well worth downloading.

Posted on December 11, 2007 at 7:10 AM26 Comments

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Comments

Um, if i'm not mistaking, this book has been available for free online for years.
I agree that this book is great, though.

Posted by: john doe at December 11, 2007 7:45 AM


It was online when I was in School, so it's been up for at least 5 odd year now. Menezes has a lot of his papers online as well.

Posted by: ramanan at December 11, 2007 8:27 AM


Yes, that as been online for a lot of years now. I don't know about the legitimate though :|

Posted by: Jose Celestino at December 11, 2007 8:54 AM


I think Bruce's main reason was to announce it publicly. Indeed the book (as many of Menezes' works) has been available online for quite a long time... but if you do not really plow in this field, you probably would not know.

Now it is out in the open. Good to have someone else -- read Bruce -- promoting this very good book. Rather heavy reading though :-)

Posted by: hggdh at December 11, 2007 9:05 AM


Not to forget that you blogged about this less then a month ago.

Well, OK, that was about an online course in which one of the first links was pointing at this book.

Posted by: Derob at December 11, 2007 9:06 AM


Not to be confused with this handbook pertaining to Applied Cryptography, of course:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/273be8

;)

Posted by: ziani at December 11, 2007 9:18 AM


Any chance of seeing "Beyond Fear" made available under some kind of non-commercial Creative Commons license? It's a royal pain to obtain in UK bookshops, and I can only afford so many hardback copies to lend and give to friends. I want all my friends, colleagues, political representatives etc. to read it!

Posted by: Dave Page at December 11, 2007 9:19 AM


I don't understand why people feel the need to point out that a post is old news or whatnot; regardless of the validity of the re-post. Unless you just love the attention you draw to yourself, what does it matter? Perhaps some of us have a heavy work-load and don't have time to follow every link of every post or read every security blog out there.

Posted by: Bryan at December 11, 2007 9:27 AM


@Bryan: Bruce said that the book is "now available...legitimately." This implies that those of us who were aware of this site years ago may not have gotten it legitimately. By pointing out that this is old news, we are clarifying that it's been legitimate all along.

Posted by: One of the good guys at December 11, 2007 9:54 AM


I prefer my copy of Applied Cryptography, personally.

Posted by: David at December 11, 2007 10:49 AM


> It's a royal pain to obtain in UK
> bookshops,

In French bookshops, it's a citizen pain.

Posted by: Anonymous at December 11, 2007 12:42 PM


I second the nomination for Mr. Schneier to provide free on-line copies of all his books.

Posted by: Ross Anderson at December 11, 2007 2:03 PM


"is now available online -- legitimately. "

"legitimately" refers to the fact that this is the DHS-approved version.

There are some subtle edits to bring it in line with current national-security best practices.

For example, the section on unbreakable encryption now mentions ROT13 instead of OTP.

If you have downloaded a previous, unapproved version, then it is your patriotic duty to get the update.

Posted by: Anonymous at December 11, 2007 2:47 PM


hahahaha, oh Bruce...you get away with this one for free because of how useful this autographed picture of you is for wiping harddrives.

Posted by: bobdole at December 11, 2007 5:25 PM


Good to see the book online. But I think it was online earlier...

Also, I saw an online version of "Applied Cryptography, Second Edition: Protocols, Algorthms, and Source Code in C" years before. It is still somewhere in my archieves.

World class books. both.
These are some rare peices of work which you will buy the original printed copy even though you have read some free(or pirated) online version.

Posted by: Niyaz PK at December 11, 2007 9:36 PM


> Not to be confused with this handbook pertaining to Applied Cryptography, of course:

Yes. When I saw the news I thought "Well Good on you, Bruce!"

Posted by: Kanly at December 11, 2007 10:18 PM


@Kanly

"Applied Cryptography" is, basically, owned by my publisher: Wiley. I don't get to decide if the text goes online or not.

That being said, the text was distributed electronically as part of a CD-ROM thingy some years ago, and there are almost always illicit electronic copies of the book floating around the internet. Google for it.

Posted by: Bruce Schneier at December 12, 2007 2:36 AM


"there are almost always illicit electronic copies of the book floating around the internet. Google for it."

Wow :)

Posted by: Thomas Damgaard at December 12, 2007 6:22 AM


Your books are very interesting.

I hope that your next book is freely available in the electronic version.
Legitimately, of course.

ciao


Posted by: ilcomiziante at December 12, 2007 9:33 AM


> It's a royal pain to obtain in UK
> bookshops,

In Soviet Union, pain obtains you.

Posted by: vlad at December 12, 2007 10:52 AM


Bruce, your book, AC, great, got in paper. Ever going to be a AC2, like after NIST Hash contest?
Would be great to read about all the updates and new whatevers, especially trusted computing, and how much a PITA real world crypto is, OS issues, hard drives rememberance, etc... Nice to be able to show the suits a 'legitimate' source of reputable info....Otherwise its just the internet...
Enjoy your blog.

Posted by: Anonymous at December 13, 2007 12:49 PM


@anon (1249) - the sequel came out a few years ago and was titled "Practical Cryptography".

:)

Posted by: darkuncle at December 13, 2007 10:23 PM


@Bruce Schneier: There was an implicit :-) on my post. :-)

Posted by: Kanly at December 15, 2007 8:25 PM


Here is part of the copyright notice -- Permission is granted to retrieve, print and store a single copy of this chapter for personal use. This permission does not extend to binding multiple chapters of the book, ... .

So do I get to copy only one chapter? Or do I apply the copyright sequentially to each? (Of course, being careful not to bind them.)

Posted by: keith at December 17, 2007 12:05 PM


In colonial American bookstores, it's a Thomas Paine to obtain.

Posted by: justin at April 16, 2009 11:37 PM


It's all time great book on cryptography, I never seen ever before this kind.

Posted by: chalam at June 12, 2009 11:53 AM


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