Practical cryptography

What Hacker News says

1. tptacekMay 2026
   Just that book. The followup (Practical Cryptography, now called Cryptography Engineering, though it's the same book) is much, much better --- though it's also totally out of date at this point, and would also get you in trouble.
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2. tptacekMar 2025
   Sorry, you're right, I should have been less clinical about this. Practical Cryptography (which is essentially the exact same book by the same authors) was also the first cryptography book that clicked in any meaningful way for me, and really lit me up about the prospect of finding vulnerabilities in cryptosystems.

   I would actively recommend against using it as a guide in 2025. But you're not crazy to have liked it before. Funny enough, 12 years ago, I wrote a blog post about this:

   https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2013/07/22/applied-practical-cry...

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3. quuxDec 2023
   IIRC the issue with Applied Cryptography was that while it was the best resource for learning the math behind different crypto systems work and how to implement different algorithms it gave almost no guidance about how to actually use them in the real world. Which led to a lot of people deploying insecure systems based on just reading AC.

   My understanding is that Cryptography Engineering and Practical Cryptography address this and focus on using crypto in the real world rather than mathematics and theory.

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4. teleforceAug 2022
   Not OP but check out this book [1]. Apress currently has back to school discount until the end of this week.

   [1]Practical Cryptography in Python: Learning Correct Cryptography by Example:

   https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-4900-0

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5. capn_duckMar 2022
   Practical Cryptography by Bruce Schneier and Niels Ferguson is decent in that it gives a good lay of the land without diving too deep in to the mathematical rigor. The first half explains at a high level the concepts of encryption, key exchange, asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, and lays out the problem statement that PKI solves.

   It's nice in that it will list out a bunch of available encryption algorithms or hash algorithms, but at the end of the chapter say "Just use this one, it's considered safe right now." i.e. AES256 and SHA256.

   Unfortunately, it mostly avoids the practical steps of web security, like its not going to print out the command to type in to your shell to generate an SSL signing certificate. So I wouldn't recommend it if you're looking for an immediately practical book to help you secure your web server. But it orients you to the landscape so you have a general idea of what you're trying to achieve, and can google yourself the rest of the way there.

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6. TallGuyShortJun 2017
   I would recommend Schneier's Cryptography Engineering (or its predecessor) Practical Cryptography over Applied Cryptography, given the question. I agree Applied Cryptography is a very interesting book, but that's because I'm a crypto nerd. For someone looking to improve general software engineering skills, I think the other books do a better job of presenting best practices and the understanding behind them, with a bit less mathematical theory, etc.
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