Codes and Cryptography

by Dominic Welsh

This text unifies the concepts of information, codes and cryptography as first studied by Shannon in his seminal papers on communication and secrecy systems. The first five chapters cover the fundamental ideas of information theory, compact encoding of messages and the theory of
error-correcting codes. After a discussion of mathematical models of English, there is an introduction to the classical Shannon model of cryptography. This is followed by a brief survey of those aspects of computational complexity needed for an understanding of modern cryptographic methods and the
recent advances in public key cryptography, password systems and authentication techniques. Because the aim of the text is to make this exciting branch of modern applied mathematics available to readers with a variety of interests and backgrounds, the mathematical prerequisites have been kept to an
absolute minimum. Problems and solutions are included.

Paperback

First published July 7, 1988

Reviews

[Fadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure gold. An "Oxon" classic on Information Theory alongside coding and cryptography, with a sufficient amount of mathematical rigour.

[Luciano Sanzaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased this book because it was recommended on PJ Cameron’s notes on computational complexity. And despite of a short 20 pages Introduction to the subject, that chapter alone makes the book worth buying.
This book is very well written, short and easily readable, spanning information theory, error correcting codes, cryptography and computational complexity in less than 250 pages and providing several technical details. The content is a little bit dated, but it’s more than enough for an introductory book.