
Handbook of applied cryptography
by Alfred J. Menezes · first published 1996
25mentions
14recommended by
24HN commenters
2011–2026first – last mentioned
58% recommend42% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Dense, mathematical reference with pseudocode for many algorithms, such as Montgomery multiplication, that readers implement directly. Suits those wanting rigorous background beyond intro texts.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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For me it is Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Alfred J. Menezes, Paul C. van Oorschot and Scott A. Vanstone https://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/hac/ (link has all chapters available for free under permission from CRC Press)
on “Some Cryptography Books I Like” ↗…are also treated in the above two references (Hoffstein et al. and Koblitz). Still, I appreciate the focus on ECC, which is large enough to merit entire books. For a reference text, Menezes et al.'s Handbook of Applied Cryptography contains a lot of information, although it's starting to show its age. Still, if you need to find a definition or something, it's a great place to look. For an understanding of the (roughly) state-of-the-art…
on “Mathematical Cryptology [pdf]” ↗…they don't work in security. 13. Introduction to Modern Cryptography This book, along with #14 is what you want to read if you're going to work as a cryptographer or cryptanalyst professionally. 14. Handbook of Applied Cryptography -------------------------------------- Theoretically, these books should resolve your known-unknowns and your unknown-unknowns. Anyone who reads and works through the list should be capable of designing…
on “Ask HN: What are the best books for learning information security?” ↗I learned Montgomery multiplication from the Handbook of Applied Cryptography (Menezes, Oorschot and Vanstone), and coded it directly from the pseudocode therein. Not to mention lots of other crypto algorithms. This book is a gold mine.
on “Building a Curve25519 Hardware Accelerator” ↗For the mathematical background (i.e. the theory and behavior in idealized models), standard cryptography books are excellent. I recall that both Serious Cryptography and Handbook of Applied Cryptography have excellent introductions to the topic of rho structures that underlie the specific issue I mentioned. Where I've found them lacking is getting a practical understanding of how important these issues…
on “Testing sync at Dropbox (2020)” ↗…version is available for free: https://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/~sgal018/crypto-book/crypto-... On the other hand, if you're looking for a more implementation-focused text on cryptography, try Menezes' Handbook of Applied Cryptography. 3. Optimization This is extremely broad. There's linear programming, mixed integer programming, nonlinear optimization, stochastic optimization...I can't recommend textbooks targeted at everything…
on “Ask HN: Mathematicians, what textbooks are best for learning these math topics?” ↗…understand the inner working of CRC: http://www.ross.net/crc/crcpaper.html If you are interested in cryptographic hash functions a good introduction is "Applied Cryptography" that can be integrated with "Handbook of Applied Cryptography" (all chapters free here: http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/).
on “Hash Functions” ↗>Both Applied Cryptography and the Handbook of Applied Cryptography are great resources, although they're a little dated now. ... Step one is to read Cryptography Engineering. This is not optional. Read it. It is a fantastic book that details how to use cryptographic…
on “So, you want to crypto” ↗This patent was originally owned by Certicom, now part of Blackberry. One of the inventors was Scott Vanstone who's excellent book, Handbook of Applied Cryptography lives on my desk. The patent seems to indicate that Dual EC is known to be usable for escrow, something that the NSA surely knew. But given the pedigree of the authors, it must have been known by a bunch…
on “A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow” ↗…kickstart on the topic, Applied Cryptography. (Yes yes yes, I know, much of the technical recommendations are outdated.) It's still a damn good primer on the field itself. Then follow up with something like Handbook of Applied Cryptography. [0] It's a beast. And to top it off with something recently modern, I'd go with Cryptography Engineering. [1] After understanding the material from the earlier readings, this book is a suitably humbling…
on “N reasons why the spooks love Tribler” ↗RFC 2104 specifies how you should do it, see e.g. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyed-Hash_Message_Authenticati... The Handbook of Applied Cryptography, Chapter 9 (free online: http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/hac/) nicely explains the reasons.
on “Why you should never use hash functions for message authentication” ↗…on terminology and basic concepts, but not a good book for people who wish to actually design good crypto systems. In the late 90's the book that I had recommended to be my academics in the field was Handbook of Applied Cryptography. It's a lot more academic and mathematical and not as mass market friendly is Applied Cryptography, but it is also a lot more accurate for people wanting a fundamental mathematical and theoretical grounding…
on “Cryptography is a science, not engineering” ↗Thanks for the link. You can download this entire Handbook of Applied Cryptography for free [1]. Recently the authors also provided online course and video namely: - Cryptography 101: Building Blocks (fundamental cryptographic primitives) [2] - Cryptography 101: Real-World Deployments…
on “Crypto 101 – Introductory course on cryptography (2017)” ↗Handbook of Applied Cryptography is a good reference for implementing classic cryptographic algorythms.
on “The case of the 9 bit AES key” ↗…Eigenfaces for recognition, 1991. Turk, MIT. 17) Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment, 1999. Kleinberg, Cornell. 18) Indexing by latent semantic analysis, 1990. Deerwester, UChicago. 20) Handbook of Applied Cryptography, 1996. Menezes, UWaterloo. Industry -------- 3) A tutorial on hidden Markov models and selected applications in speech recognition, 1989. LR Rabiner, Bell Labs. 8) Optimization by simulation annealing,…
on “Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google” ↗