Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age

If the National Security Agency (NSA) had wanted to make sure that strong encryption would reach the masses, it couldn't have done much better than to tell the cranky geniuses of the world not to do it. Author Steven Levy, deservedly famous for his enlightening Hackers, tells the story of the cypherpunks, their foes, and their allies in Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government.

Appropriate for all graduate-level and advanced undergraduate courses in cryptography and related mathematical fields. Modern Cryptography is an indispensable resource for every advanced student of cryptography who intends to implement strong security in real-world applications. Leading HP security expert Wenbo Mao explains why conventional crypto schemes, protocols, and systems are profoundly vulnerable, introducing both fundamental theory and real-world attacks. Next, he shows how to implement crypto systems that are truly "fit for application," and formally demonstrate their fitness. He begins by reviewing the foundations of cryptography: probability, information theory, computational complexity, number theory, algebraic techniques, and more. He presents the "ideal" principles of authentication, comparing them with real-world implementation. Mao assesses the strength of IPSec, IKE, SSH, SSL, TLS, Kerberos, and other standards, and offers practical guidance on designing stronger crypto schemes and using formal methods to prove their security and efficiency.Finally, he presents an in-depth introduction to zero-knowledge protocols: their characteristics, development, arguments, and proofs. Mao relies on practical examples throughout, and provides all the mathematical background students will need.

Freedom's not dead in cyberspace. That's the premise of philosopher Peter Ludlow and most of the contributors to his Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias, and it's hard to argue otherwise after reading it. Deliberately freeing the volume from the shackles of academic rigor (and jargon), Ludlow draws deeply from the cyber-underground and mixes classic rants with post-millennial realism. From John Perry Barlow's chestnut "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" to Jedediah Purdy's cautionary "The God of the Digerati," the collection is direct, confrontational, and thought-provoking.