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Does anyone know of any resources that cover encryption (and analysing weaknesses therein) from, as far as possible, a purely theoretical and mathematical (rather than programmatic - which tends to be a case of the excellent advice: 'just use an existing solution') point of view, taking it from fundamentals? I'd like to be able to understand why things are done in certain ways, and what methods are there to protect against certain cryptanalysis attacks etc. For interest purposes and not for the purpose of creating a new method (because it would be very weak).

Bruce Schneier - Applied Cryptography

At least, that's what I heard it would contain and that's why I'm ordering it. Should be here within a week so if you have a little time I can check it for you.

If you could, that'd be great, cheers. No rush, it isn't for any purpose other than knowledge for knowledge's sake and my school is a 3 minute walk from a very sizeable bookstore.

lo,

this one might also be usefull: http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/

additionaly you could look for several encryption standards on wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_E ... n_Standard)


Regards.
PyroMathic

Most practical examples mostly focus on either what the exact operations are and/or how to implement it. There are very few docs on the theory behind it, linear/differential cryptanalysis etc.

I think wikipedia might hold a few things on it...

@Pyr0Mathic - Thanks for the links - the first one in particular. I've looked for information on encryption standards (and implemented a couple... but without really understanding them in most cases tbh) before, and was really looking for something a little more general.

@Candy - That's certainly been my experience. However, I ran into a couple books in said bookstore earlier today. Searching for them on Amazon and then widening the search to books in seemingly appropriate categories yielded the following: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search?searc ... athematics. That seems quite promissing.

Basically I'd like to learn this stuff now rather than in 3 or 4 years in Uni.

Candy wrote: Bruce Schneier - Applied Cryptography

At least, that's what I heard it would contain and that's why I'm ordering it. Should be here within a week so if you have a little time I can check it for you.

Delivery time of a week is optimistic.

As far as I can tell it contains mostly practical (IE, applied) examples of cryptography. I'm seeing a bunch of generic types of algorithms and some actual examples, but I'm missing generic cryptanalysis topics at least. It could be in here but I doubt it is.

Thanks, Candy. Might steer clear, or at least buy it in conjunction with something closer to what I'm looking for.

Midas wrote: Thanks, Candy. Might steer clear, or at least buy it in conjunction with something closer to what I'm looking for.

If you find it, please do post it here. I'm still searching for one too

Shall do.