Review of Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice, Fifth Edition

‘‘Fifth Edition’’ says a lot. This is a well-polished book. The title accurately describes the contents of the book. Cryptography and Network Security has seven parts. The first three parts focus on cryptographic topics. Part One covers a sampling of topics from classical cryptography; block ciphers (emphasizing the Data Encryption Standard DES); an introduction to number theory and finite fields; the Advanced Encryption Standard AES; block cipher modes; and pseudorandom number generators and stream ciphers. Part Two begins with additional topics from number theory to prepare for chapters on public key cryptography; public key cryptography (emphasizing RSA); and an introduction to Diffie-Hellman key exchange, the ElGamal cryptosystem, and elliptic curve cryptography. Part Three discusses hash functions, message authentication codes (MACs), and digital signatures. Part Four has two chapters – one focuses on key management and distribution, and the other focuses on user authentication protocols. Part Five contains chapters on network and internet security: transport-level security, wireless network security, and electronic mail security. Parts Six and Seven are online chapters. Part Six discusses system security, and Part Seven discusses legal and ethical issues. There are 18 appendices (nine contain projects and nine have examples in Sage and are keyed to the chapters) and 52 online appendices (twelve have Sage exercises and are keyed to the chapters). There are twelve pages of references to which Stallings refers in the text. The author also maintains a list of links to papers and websites containing related material. He is thorough. There is a lot here on which to build a course. The links to websites seem the least useful because I suspect that most instructors have their own favorite sites. Parts one through three would make a one-semester course in cryptography. Stalling’s book would support either an undergraduate or graduate course, but the level of detail that is presented is a bit much for an undergraduate course, and it