Schneier on Security

By Whitfield Diffie

The literature of cryptography has a curious history. Secrecy, of course, has always played a central role, but until the First World War, important developments appeared in print in a more or less timely fashion and the field moved forward in much the same way as other specialized disciplines. As late as 1918, one of the most influential cryptanalytic papers of the 20th century, William F. Friedman’s monograph The Index of Coincidence and its Applications in Cryptography, appeared as a research report of the private Riverbank Laboratories. And this, despite the fact that the work had been done as part of the war effort. In the same year Edward H. Hebern of Oakland, California filed the first patent for a rotor machine, the device destined to be a mainstay of military cryptography for nearly fifty years…

There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files. This book is about the latter.

If I take a letter, lock it in a safe, hide the safe somewhere in New York, and then tell you to read the letter, that’s not security. That’s obscurity. On the other hand, if I take a letter and lock it in a safe, and then give you the safe along with the design specifications of the safe and a hundred identical safes with their combinations so that you and the world’s best safecrackers can study the locking mechanism—and you still can’t open the safe and read the letter, that’s security…

Applied Cryptography

Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C

A book by Bruce Schneier

This second edition of the cryptography classic provides you with a comprehensive survey of modern cryptography. The book details how programmers and electronic communications professionals can use cryptography—the technique of enciphering and deciphering messages—to maintain the privacy of computer data. It describes dozens of cryptography algorithms, gives practical advice on how to implement them in cryptographic software, and shows how they can be used to solve security problems. Covering the latest developments in practical cryptographic techniques, this new edition shows programmers who design computer applications, networks, and storage systems how they can build security into their software and systems…