Beginners books on security

[Adam Atkinson (ETL)]

> > I was asked to recommend boks on security/crypto/copy protection
> 
> Somewhat to my surprise, nobody has taken up my invitation 
> for comments on
> "The Code Book" by Simon Singh. Perhaps none of you have read 
> it? Or is it
> considered unworthy of comment? (Or perhaps I missed an 
> earlier thread?)

I'm tourist-grade compared with many people on this list, but 
for what it's worth I quite liked "The Code Book". I managed
to solve 4 or 5 of the puzzles at the end, but the book code
one stopped me dead, and the others seemed beyond my capabilities.

I don't think "The Code Book", on its own, is likely to
satisfy someone looking for "security/crypto/copy protection".
Dorothy Denning, or some of the O'Reilly stuff, would probably
do a better job. NB that some of the O'Reilly stuff is explicitly
aimed at non-techies. Even "Practical Unix and Internet Security"
has quite a lot of obvious stuff about non-computer-related issues.

"Computer-Related Risks" by, um, Peter Neumann (?) the comp.risks
guy is another good one. It's a catalogue of things that have gone
wrong in the past. comp.risks itself is something I always recommend:
I think the "non-techie" should download the complete comp.risks
archive and have a rummage.

For the crypto part alone, T.C.B. is a reasonable candidate.

> Singh's book is definitely in the "What-it-does" category. I 
> was interested
> to know whether, from the point of view of the specialists, 
> he manages to
> give explanations which are reasonably accurate and complete.

I'm not really a specialist, but I'd say yes.