mjr@osiris.UUCP (Marcus J. Ranum) (10/03/87)
While I am not a hard-core cryppy or mathematician, I'm pretty pleased with this book I picked up as one of the selections on the Library of Computer and Information Sciences bookclub. It's called "_Mathematical_Cryptology_" by Wayne Patterson (~$35.00). I haven't finished it yet, but among the good points I see so far: PASCAL (ick) source code for many types of crypt routines, including DES, RSA, and others. Specifically for computer hacks, a discussion of the authentication problem, that is pretty technish, but understandable. For people such as myself who aren't math wizzes, there are lots of parts in this book that are best left unread :-). There is pretty good plain text explanation of what all the math symbols MEAN, though, so it's not too hard to follow. I recommend it. --mjr(); -- If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness... -Johnny Mnemonic