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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

Oh interesting. I recently got "Applied Cryptography" in one of the nostarchpress sales. I expected it to be turbo technical and way outside my league but popped it open on a whim one day. So far it's incredibly accessible, does anyone have thoughts on that versus this course? Worth taking the course after I finish Applied cryptography?

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Incidentally, Applied Cryptography is often critiqued for making crypto seemingly easy and incredibly accessible, which led to some people implementing very nice fails. For practical purposes the later Cryptography Engineering book is probably a better choice.

That's an interesting point. However, I am not interested in implementing/engineering cryptography (ever), just having a decent idea of what's going on. Is this still a failure of the book I should watch out for?

Yes! It hasn't gotten better. I wrote Crypto 101 for a reason -- there are a number of problems I have with both the approach, and even if the approach were good, it's horribly outdated now.

Serious Cryptography is also good and modern.

Do you mean "Serious Cryptography"? Applied Cryptography isn't a No Starch Press book.

No, I do mean Applied Cryptography. I may have picked it up in a humble bundle sale in hindsight.

Gotcha. Serious Cryptography is good. Applied Cryptography is... not. Except insofar Latacora making stickers that make fun of it and people printing t-shirts to benefit charities is good of course :-)

It's also good for historical interest. It was a great book for its time. Now it's horribly outdated, even Schneier recommends against using it for anything other than learning about the state of academic cryptography in the '90s. Which is important, but not relevant to modern cryptography.

Applied Cryptography is terrible.

https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2013/07/22/applied-practical-cry...

No Starch's "Serious Cryptography", the JP Aumasson book, is strong.

I recall you saying that "Cryptography Engineering" was much better than AC somewhere.

Do you recommend Serious Cryptography over that?

Both books have their strengths. If I had to pick one, it'd be Serious Cryptography, since it's much more up-to-date than Cryptography Engineering is.

Part of our current Humble Bundle, too.

No, Applied Cryptography isn’t “terrible”, but treat it as a starting point. It will help you understand more advanced references (like the linked blog post).

No, Applied Cryptography is actively misleading. I can't say it any better than that linked post does.

Too late to edit: I believe I actually picked up "Applied Cryptography" in a Humble Bundle sale.

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