Springer An Introduction to Mathematical Cryptography

Title line statement applies to all those who buy this book quite individually (on their own like here on Amazon) and do not take a cryptography class on educational institution, a class where this book is used as material. This information I got from book's Author.Second edition - numerous typesetting errors.

You will learn so much from this book. To begin, it has an extensive list of references that it consistently points out in the text. This motivates the reader to explore certain topics on their own and it gives them a starting point to do so. You will find that it is also very easy to read. Of course it requires quite a bit mathematical maturity as there is heavy use of Abstract Algebra, but it is easy to follow even with a basic understanding of the material. What I loved the most were the exercises provided at the end of each section. As it goes for any subject, explanations can only go so far. To truly learn the material you need to practice it with problems that go beyond what you read at face value. After doing countless problems, I noticed how they were chosen specifically to further your understandings. They weren't the type of problem that asked you to regurgitate what you had read. I love this book.

I used this book to teach a class of math and computer science majors. The book is great. It covers major topics; RSA, El-Gamal. Elliptic Curves, Lattice Based Cryptography. The systems are described and important attacks on the mathematical underpinnings are given in detail. The necessary mathematics is developed. Many homework problems on which the reader can practice are another strength. The students have expressed how much they get from the book. I highly recommend it.

This 500+ pages book is very nice and deals with the Mathematical point of view with many explanations, but one will always neeed an additional support book of Algebra such as Topics in Algebra by I. N. Herstein (LC 74-82577) to fully grasp all the related Math fundamentals.

Good introduction to intermediate level coverage of math-based crypto, however, I found the text hard to follow because the cross references were hard to look up. E.g. a back reference to proposition x.y is hard to look up bec propositions are somewhat sparse and each chapter x is very large -- so you find yourself thumbing through the chapter trying to find propositions to get your bearing. It really interferes with the reading process. Including a page number would help greatly. (For more purely math books, this isn't as large of an issue bec there are so many propositions and theorems that it's easy to isolate the back reference -- but for this text, it is quite difficult.)