Cryptography Made Simple

by Nigel Smart · first published 2015

7mentions

6recommended by

7HN commenters

2020–2026first – last mentioned

86% recommend14% neutral

Why HN recommends it

Covers a broad set of cryptography topics, including elliptic curve cryptography, with helpful visuals. It is technical yet accessible to anyone with a CS, EE, maths or physics background.

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What Hacker News says

opus132 · May 31, 2020 · Recommends

Nigel Smart's Cryptography Made Simple is a great book which covers elliptic curve cryptography amougst many other topics; despite its name it's a very technical book, but it's easily accessible to anyone with a CS/EE/Maths/Physics degree.…
on “Basic Intro to Elliptic Curve Cryptography (2019)” ↗
jeroenhd · Jul 4, 2022 · Recommends

…make textbook mistakes in important code, you're clearly doing it wrong. If you're interested in learning cryptography so you can try to roll your own, I recommend starting with books like these: - Cryptography Made Simple by Nigel Smart - Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier - Cryptography Engineering: design principles and practical applications by Neil Ferguson, Bruce Schneier, and Tadayoshi Kohno These books require…
on “Police CyberAlarm Uses Alarming Cryptography” ↗
zahllos · Aug 8, 2021 · Recommends

…AES in such a way as to meet our expectations. Except perhaps Telegram but nobody knows what they're smoking. If you want an actual textbook, Introduction to Modern Cryptography by Katz and Lindell, or Cryptography Made Simple by Nigel Smart will cover this in plenty of detail, and are also good all round introductions to most areas of cryptography by leading experts. I learn towards the book by Smart, but either will be perfectly…
on “Why I Wrote PGP (1999)” ↗
aildours · May 27, 2022 · Recommends

…Very Short Introduction" by Piper and Murphy - This is a book in the Very Short Introduction series, so is a bit light on the math. If that's what you are looking for though, this is a good resource. - "Cryptography Made Simple" by Nigel Smart - The choice of topics is quite eclectic (in the best way possible!). For ex. it is the first general crypto book I've read which talks about lattices (most post-quantum world crypto schemes…
on “Ask HN: Best book on modern cryptography?” ↗
pet_the_bird · May 4, 2026 · Recommends

"Cryptography Made Simple" By Nigel Smart and "A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography" by Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup are excellent resources for people that have affinity with Math and CS. The second resource can be a tough…
on “Why are neural networks and cryptographic ciphers so similar?” ↗
xoa · Oct 6, 2025 · Recommends

…texts that I think a lot of courses still get started with. Finally I've heard good things about Esslinger's "Learning and Experiencing Cryptography with CrypTool and SageMath" from last year and Smart's "Cryptography Made Simple", which has a bunch of helpful visuals. For online stuff, man is there a ton, and plenty comes up on HN with some regularity. I guess I've been a fan of a lot of the work Quanta Magazine does on explaining…
yarinr · May 2, 2020 · Mentions

…Principles of Data Mining Fundamentals of Business Process Management UML @ Classroom Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems Computer Vision Data Mining Computational Geometry Cryptography Made Simple Eye Tracking Methodology The Data Science Design Manual An Introduction to Machine Learning Guide to Discrete Mathematics Modelling Computing Systems Understanding Cryptography Concise…
on “Springer Nature offer free access to 500 essential textbooks” ↗