Cryptography, Information Theory, and Error Correction

This is the second edition of a book first published in 2005 and reviewed here. This remains a very attractive book.  A number of new topics have been added (with a few removed), and there are now more than 350 worked examples and problems with solutions.

 

The authors do an excellent job teaching a combination of cryptography, information theory and error correction.  Their text would support a course limited to basic cryptography or a broader combination of cryptography with some information theory and a bit of error correction. There is almost certainly more than enough material here for a full year course.

 

This new edition improves and adds in several areas. New topics of particular value include data compression and its applications, privacy and security issues with the Internet of Things, and homomorphic encryption of data in the cloud that allows computation with data in encrypted form.

 

The first edition was pleasantly encyclopedic, and adeptly combined and integrated its three primary subjects. The new edition is almost 200 pages longer, and feels a little – overstuffed - maybe. The authors might want to consider trimming some topics in any future editions.

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Bill Satzer (bsatzer@gmail.com), now retired from 3M Company, spent most of his career as a mathematician working in industry on a variety of applications. He did his PhD work in dynamical systems and celestial mechanics.