smith@umn-cs.UUCP (Richard Smith) (12/08/83)
#N:umn-cs:16700001:000:650 umn-cs!smith Dec 7 14:09:00 1983 I recently picked up a book "Cryptography: A Primer" by Alan Korkheim of IBM. It presented some of the most satisfying descriptions of well known cryptosystems that I've ever seen. He covers just about every cipher I'd ever heard of: Caesar, Playfair, Vigenere, rotors (Enigma, Purple, etc), DES, and public key systems. He talks about how the codes are generated, their mathematical properties, and schemes for breaking them. This book is not for the mathematically faint-hearted, though. If you have an engineer's dose of college math or more, you'll be able to muddle through it. Rick. [smith.umn-cs@CSNet-Relay] [...ihnp4!umn-cs!smith]
fulk@sunybcs.UUCP (Mark Fulk) (12/14/83)
The name of the author of "Cryptography, a Primer" is Konheim, NOT Korkheim. Please try to get people's names right. -- Mark Fulk Department of Computer Science fulk.buffalo@udel-relay SUNY at Buffalo ...!rocksvax!sunybcs!fulk 4226 Ridge Lea Rd. (716)831-3061 Amherst, NY 14226
smith@umn-cs.UUCP (12/15/83)
#R:umn-cs:16700001:umn-cs:16700002:000:436 umn-cs!smith Dec 14 13:39:00 1983 Several people pointed out that I didn't give a complete citation for Kornheim's cryptography book. Here it is: Alan G. Kornheim, "Cryptography, A Primer", John Wiley & Sons, 1981. If your local or chain bookstores are stocking several hundred bookshelf-feet of computer books (they are in the Twin Cities, anyway) you can probably find it there. I may have seen a copy in a B.Dalton's store once, in the computer section. Rick.