Schneier on Security

For anyone who wants to study cryptography, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort by getting Schneier’s book. From the simple Caesar cipher to RSA and beyond, there is nothing the book doesn’t at least touch on. Protocols, techniques, algorithms, and even source code are included. A “Real World” section looks both at specific implementations and at the politics of encryption.

Schneier notes that his work is *not* a mathematical text. It is difficult to say how much of a shortcoming this is for any given reader, but a safe bet is “not much”. For those who do need more rigorous treatments of specific topics, the bibliography lists almost a thousand references, all of which are described and cited within the book text at some point…