3 ms·

I don't have a dog in this race either way, but I'm curious what you dislike about Schneier's book.

• Locke1689 16y ago
  It's not deep enough to provide true knowledge of cryptography and cryptographic attacks while it also doesn't give practical advice on what to actually do in situations that require cryptography (read: always use high-level primitives). Applied Cryptography is pretty good (if outdated), I think, if you're seeking to gain a beginner-level knowledge of cryptography. Practical Cryptography, on the other hand, is a far better choice for what to do when actually using cryptography (although even that is outdated now).
  • tptacek 16y ago
    If you think _Practical_ is outdated (and I'm not saying it isn't), you should come over and let us buy you coffee sometime.
    • Locke1689 16y ago
      Haha I'll take you up on that when I get back to Northwestern. I'll admit that the only reason I think it's outdated is because I was just teaching basic cryptography to the network security students and ran across a few things that made me think "Hmm, Niels/Schneier should really include this in their next printing." Some things I'm thinking of are EAX/GCM instead of the conventional CTR.
• tptacek 16y ago
  Quoting me: "Lots of random facts about crypto trivia. Not a lot of context. Even less information about how to actually safely use crypto primitives. You'll come out of it knowing how to get CAST or IDEA into your code --- two ciphers nobody uses anymore --- but not how to properly choose an IV for CBC mode."