new book pre announcement

[Network Security Observations <NSO@delphi.com>]

ISM/NSO received the manuscript of 'Cryptography: Theory and Practice'
Author is Doug Stinson (Comp. Science/Eng. dept. University of Nebraska).
Publisher is CRC Press Inc.
Pages: 434
Chapters: 13
Format: Hardbound trimmed book 8,5 x 5,5
ISBN: not available yet
Expected release: within 3 months
Price: not available yet

Preliminary review (a full review will be published in Internet Security
Monthly)

The book starts - obvious - with classical cryptography. Hopping from shift
cipher, to substitution, to affine, to vigenere, to hill, to permutation, and
ending in the range of simple cryptosystems with stream ciphers.  A mature
subchapter is devoted to cryptanalysis, covering the affine, the substitution
and the vigenere. And providing a known plaintext attack on the hill cipher. 
The subchapter ends with the cryptanalysis of the LFSR-based stream cipher.  A 
next chapter discusses in depth Shannon's theory. This is followed by the
inevitable discussion of the DES, its modes of operation and includes an
attack on a 3 round DES, and an attack on a 6 round DES.  Chapter 4 discusses
RSA and factoring. Touching also the not much discussed Chinese Remainder
theorem.. The Rabin scheme is reviewed. And within factoring Doug pays
attention to Dixon's Algorithm and the quadratic sieve.  Of course other
public key cryptosystems, as El Gamal, finite field, Merkle Hellman and
McEliece are discussed.  Doug explains signature schemes, as El Gamal and DSS
and touches undeniable and fail-stop. In Hash functions, after the basics,
among others MD4 and timestamping are issues of interest. In key distribution
and key agreement Blom's scheme, D-H, Kerberos, station to station, MIT key
agreement are noteworthy stops.  Another chapter goes into identification
scheme's discussing Schnorr, Okamoto, Guillou-Quisquater, and a general
overview of conversion processes from identification to signature.   In
authentication codes a good discussion on computing deception probabilities,
and combinatorial bounds. In the latter orthogonal arrays are a topic of
interest. Doug also views the entropy bounds on deception probabilities.  A
next chapter introduces the Shamir treshold, the monotone circuit construction 
and Ernie Brickell's vector space, among others.  A separate chapter is
devoted to pseudo-random numbers, giving examples. The indistinguishable
probability distributions and the Blum/Blum/Shub generator are noteworthy.
Extra attention for probabilistic encryption.  As common fur the subject,
close to the end of the book, zero-knowledge proofs are discussed in depth. 

The book is basically organized in three parts: private key cryptography,
public key cryptography and the introduction to four active research area's.
It's comprehensive in the 'core' area's of cryptography. Although
Cryptography: Theory and Practice is a text book, it certainly provides
researchers and practitioners in the field with material on less discussed
topics, and certainly invites for the development of new idea's.  The work
contains also a comprehensive reference section and the good workable index. 
Each chapter ends with exercise material. 

For the reader:
It is necessary to have at least some familiarity with basic linear algebra
and modular arithmetic. 

Compliments to Doug Stinson who sat many hours behind his terminal to get it
all straightened out, and to a professional publisher that is up to the job of 
putting it all 
in print in such a layout that student, researcher and professional are
encouraged. 

11 February 1995
Internet Security Monthly
Network Security Observations
Editorial Office

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