[tptacek]

Applied Cryptography, no matter what Matthew Green may have to say about it, is a terrible book to learn cryptography from. I highly recommend you burn it and instead pick up a copy of Practical Cryptography (or Cryptography Engineering, which is the exact same book).

The mark of a good book on a security topic is, you can read it "upside down" and learn how to break things instead of build them.

[DanBC]

Frustratingly, there's more than one applied cryptography. There's (obviously) Schneier's book, and then there's this:

(http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/)

[tptacek]

Menezes is "Handbook Of Applied Cryptography", but this was actually a sore point with Schneier back in '98 (I feel like I listened to him complain about it in a bar at Usenix Security).

In any case, get Practical Cryptography.

[waterlesscloud]

Why is Applied Cryptography a terrible book?

[tptacek]

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=by%3Atptace...

[JoshTriplett]

More specifically, the one comment in that search that provides rationale: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377187

[tptacek]

I disagree that it's the only comment with a rationale, but it's a fine example. Writing the same thing about the same subjects over and over again is tiresome, isn't it?

(Thank you for taking the time to pick one out though).

[naner]

From the horse's mouth:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_cult_of_sc...