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Cryptography Decrypted
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by H. X. Mel and Doris M. Baker
Sales Rank: 350337
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Discount: 27 %
$19.31
At Amazon
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Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional December 31, 2000
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0201616475
ISBN-13: 978-0201616477
Product Dimensions:
9.1 x 7.3 x 0.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
Book Info
(Pearson Education) A tutorial in digital cryptography, for readers at any level of experience. Requires no technical or mathematical expertise, but does include appendices for those who have it. Topics covered include public and private keys, hashes and message digests, cryptographic attacks, and digital signatures. Softcover. DLC: Computer security.
Back Cover Copy
Fundamental security concepts like cryptography and digital signatures are becoming as much a part of our everyday lives as megabytes and the Internet. Anyone working with computer security--security professionals, network administrators, IT managers, CEOs, and CIOs--need to have a comfortable understanding of the cryptographic concepts in this book.
Cryptography Decrypted shows you how to safeguard digital possessions. It is a clear, comprehensible, and practical guide to the essentials of computer cryptography, from Caesar's Cipher through modern-day public key. Cryptographic capabilities like detecting imposters and stopping eavesdropping are thoroughly illustrated with easy-to-understand analogies, visuals, and historical sidebars.
You need little or no background in cryptography to read Cryptography Decrypted. Nor does it require technical or mathematical expertise. But for those with some understanding of the subject, this book is comprehensive enough to solidify knowledge of computer cryptography and challenge those who wish to explore the high-level math appendix.
Divided into four parts, the book explains secret keys and secret key methods like DES, public and private keys, and public key methods like RSA; how keys are distributed through digital certificates; and three real-world systems. Numerous graphics illustrate and clarify common cryptographic terminology throughout. You will find coverage of such specific topics as: - Secret key and secret key exchanges
- Public and private keys
- Digital signatures
- Digital certificates, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and PGP
- Hashes and message digests
- Secure e-mail, secure socket layer (SSL), and Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)
- Protecting keys
- Cryptographic attacks
- Authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and nonrepudiation
"Even after ten years working in the field of information protection for a major electronics manufacturing company, I learned a lot from this book. I think you will too."
--From the Foreword by John Kinyon
0201616475B04062001
Customer Reviews & Comments
This book clearly explains the foundation of cryptography, numbers, and the techniques that have emerged to provide modern security technologies. The book starts with Part I, that sets the context by introducing terms and the basics, including ciphers, data encryption standard (DES) and secret keys. The authors did a remarkable job by making complex concepts easy to understand. The next two parts go into more detail about public keys and digital certificates. While these are relatively simple to learn on the surface, the details have always eluded me until I read this book because more papers and books on the subject get too deep into details too fast and assume knowledge of advanced math on the part of the reader. Not so this book - the authors make it easy through clear writing, illustrations that illuminate the textual descriptions and a knack for explaining the complex in simple and easily digestible chunks. I especially liked Part IV, which covers secure electronic commerce because it covered the full spectrum of technologies and the information is immediately useful to all IT and security professionals. Like in the first three parts of this book I came away with a complete understanding of how everything works. This book epitomizes clear writing. Moreover, it is simply amazing how much knowledge can be relatively painlessly gained from reading this book. Although I am sure the authors intended to make the inner workings of cryptography accessible to non-security professionals (which they unquestionably accomplished), they also set a standard of excellence in technical writing by producing a book that is, in my opinion, near perfect in its ability to seamlessly use lively prose and well thought out illustrations to convey highly technical information. If you need to learn cryptography but are challenged by the math and the impenetratable writing of other books on the subject, start with this one.
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Cryptography Decrypted
Discount: 27 %
Available from Amazon
Price: $19.31
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