In order to appreciate this book, I think it is necessary to look at the preface and see the goals that the author has set out. First, Oppliger mentions that the book’s intended audience is computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, and that part of the goal is to write a book that presents cryptography in a way that bridges the gap between the various needs of these groups. Another goal that Oppliger mentions is that the book is meant to be comprehensive and tutorial in nature. Each of these goals, when applied to cryptography, is impressive, and, in the rest of this review, I will try to consider to what extent these goals have been met.

In the preface, Oppliger also mentions that the book is the result of a course that he ran on contemporary cryptography. The book reflects this heritage, in both its content and structure. The book is just over 500 pages long, and starts off with a rather brief introduction to cryptography that serves to introduce the language that is used to discuss the topic.

The introductory chapters are followed by Part 1, “Mathematical Fundamentals.” This part includes chapters on discrete mathematics, probability theory, information theory, and complexity theory. Each of the chapters is rather dense (each of the topics, on its own, is typically a one-semester course in computer science). I had a bit of difficulty trying to ascertain at what level they were pegged, but concluded that they were probably at the level of someone who had either studied the subject previously and needed a refresher, or at the level of someone who already had a fairly good grasp of math.

Part 2 covers unkeyed cryptosystems, and begins with a discussion of one-way functions, followed by several popular hash functions (namely, MD5 and SHA-1). At the end of Part 2, there is a chapter on random bit generators, and, at the end of Part 3, there is a section on pseudorandom bit generators and pseudorandom functions. These might have been more properly placed in Part 1.

Part 3 covers symmetric encryption systems, and discusses the implementation of at least two major ones (data encryption standard (DES) and advanced encryption standard (AES)). It also discusses ideal or “perfect” systems, and mentions one-time pads. Interestingly, the index entry on one-time pads does not take the reader to this section.

Part 4 covers public key cryptosystems, and provides quite a good presentation of the important protocols and algorithms. However, I felt that possibly a bit more coverage could have been given to elliptic curve cryptography.

The final part is the epilogue, which presents a short chapter on key management, and some conclusions.

Overall, I felt the book tried to pack too much into too small a space. I think it would probably make a useful prescribed book for a cryptography course, but a lecturer using the book would have to be prepared to fill in a lot of explanations. I can also see it being a useful reference book for an engineer or a mathematician who may not be directly involved in cryptography, but who occasionally needs to communicate or understand concepts used by people who are involved in it.

In conclusion, this book covers a lot of material, and does it competently. In order to get the best results from the book, though, I think you also need to understand more than just the contents of the book.