Title: Book review: Crypto Dictionary
Date: 2021-04-02 17:00

[![Crypto Dictionary cover]({static}/images/crypto_dictionary.png)](https://nostarch.com/crypto-dictionary)

I [really liked]({filename}/crypto/book_review_serious_cryptography.md)
[JP. Aumasson](https://www.aumasson.jp/)'s
previous book, [Serious Cryptography](https://nostarch.com/seriouscrypto),
so I was really curious about his new one:
[Crypto Dictionary](https://nostarch.com/crypto-dictionary).

A bit short of 150 pages long, it's an opinionated mix of
witty definitions, mentions of niche cryptographic constructions
and obscure algorithms, historical curiosities,
and cryptography nerd jokes, like:

- **base64**: Not encryption.
- **ISO standard**: Buy this definition for $180. Please not that a paper
	format is currently unavailable.
- **NESSIE - new European Schemes for Signatures, Integrity, and Encryption**:
	A project that ran from 2000 to 2003 and was headed by seven European
	institutions. It selected 17 recommended algorithms among 42 submissions.
	NESSIE's selected algorithms didn't become formal standards, only informal
	recommendations, which in hindsight drew little interest: does anyone
	remember ACE Encrypt, SHACAL-2 or SFLASH?
- **Proof of work**: Cryptography's contribution to environmental problems.
- **SUPERCOP**: […] In terms of CPU usage, running SUPERCPOP is to cryptography
	implementers what Bitcoin mining is to cryptocurrency people.
- **Time AI™**: The [Fyre Festival](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyre_Festival) of cryptography
- **Trivium**: A minimalistic hardware-oriented stream cipher that uses an
	80-bit key. For several years, its circular representation was used on the
	banner of the [DEFCON conference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEF_CON) website
- **Vigenere cipher**: A cipher more secure than Caesar's

It's amusing to notice that the background (and strong opinions) of JP.
Aumasson perspires in the book: a lot of hash functions, TV encryption,
blockchain, … things that would maybe not have been part of
the book should it have been written by someone else.

As written in its introduction, Crypto Dictionary is meant to be an
entertaining read, so that "any reader can open the book at a random page and
discover a yet unknown notion, excavate an obscure concept, or read an anecdote
about a familiar term.", and it perfectly fulfils this role, albeit I
would argue that some jokes might be a bit too niche/obscure to be
understood by "any reader".