Cryptography Engineering
#1218 of 2,654 all-time
Cryptography Engineering
Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier
6 people recommended it in 3 threads, 2013–2022.
What people on Hacker News said
Cryptography Engineering is less advanced than Serious Cryptography (but it's "take-y-er"; there's a lot of opinion / best practices stuff in it, and a lot of that is good).
Ferguson and Schneier's _Cryptography Engineering_: https://www.amazon.com/Cryptography-Engineering-Principles-Practical-Applications/dp/0470474246 --- dated, a little wrong about some things, but not insane (like _Applied Cryptography_ is).
For someone looking to improve general software engineering skills, I think the other books do a better job of presenting best practices and the understanding behind them, with a bit less mathematical theory, etc.
They cover the fundamentals from a practical engineering perspective. After reading it you can then pop up a level and read specs to understand specific deployed protocols (e.g. TLS) or down a level and read the details of individual cryptographic primitives / constructions.
Schneier's Cryptography Engineering (previous ed. was called Practical Cryptography) would be a far more useful crypto book than Applied Cryptography.
Where it comes up
- Ask HN: Best book on modern cryptography? 2022 · 4 recommendations
- Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read? 2017 · 1 recommendation
- Code Interview Reading List 2013 · 1 recommendation