The Manga Guide to Cryptography

Really liked this book!

I thought that the point of this is to have the subject explained organically through fun situations the characters get in, and there's a little bit of that, but the vast majority of the time is just spent sitting in a classroom and getting taught the material directly. There's nothing especially innovative or newbie-friendly in how it's taught. The only thing the manga format achieves is to lower the information density such that you're getting maybe 100 pages of actual instruction in a 200 page book. (Well, it does achieve putting the cover sweetie on most pages, which is a definite value add, but i'd say not enough to justify getting half of what any other book of the same size would give you.)

Exactly what I expected, except even more in-depth.

OwO, what’s this? *notices private key*.

This “Manga Guide to…” series is fantastic and this is another solid entry worthy of your time and attention, provided the subject matter is of interest for any reason. While none of the entries in the series could or is intended to replace a textbook, they are all fantastic supplementary materials to any study of the academic topics covered.The Manga Guide to Cryptography tackles all of the main points you would expect of an academic introduction to the topic. It does so with clarity, with precision, and surrounds the academic details with an enjoyable narrative that makes the information much easier to absorb. In fact, I would go so far as to say the story makes the subject matter move from difficult, but interesting, to enjoyable. This is done by giving a context to the subject matter that the reader can relate to.Ruka Maguro is the younger sister of Jun Meguro, who is a police inspector. She tags along with him as he investigates a case of art theft from a supposedly secure museum. As information security is discussed during the investigation they are joined by Rio Yoneda, a news reporter, who points out the flaws in the first cryptographic cipher being used to protect the location of the now-stolen masterpiece. This is all in the first five pages.From here, the story develops (I won’t spoil the plot any further). Along the way, the book covers the foundations of encryption and classic ciphers, various algorithms such as symmetric-key and public-key and multiple implementations and details for each, and finally a number of practical applications of encryption. The book will not teach you how to become an elite hacker (1337 hax0r, either), but will give you a solid introduction to a wide breadth of foundation information in the topic. It does so with enough clarity and precision to help you understand what the various ciphers, algorithms, and implementations are and how they are currently or previously used along with enough understanding to help you do further research on any that interest you deeply.This book won’t replace a textbook and doing your homework, but it has a very strong chance of helping you overcome the fear and intimidation that are often associated with these complex topics. Like the other titles in this series, I recommend this book highly.

Can you keep a secret? Or, can you tell just one other person the secret, without anyone else understanding how you shared it? If you want to know more about ways to keep your privacy, and the pros and cons of data protection protocols, this Manga book is a good place to start.The book starts with simple ciphers. Simple in this context generally means done without the aid of computers. Examples of simple ciphers include Caesar cipher, substitution cipher, polyalphabetic cipher, and transposition cipher. And of course, still the most secure cipher, the one-time pad, which is often the favorite cipher in spy stories of World War II.The majority of the book, though, deals computer-generated ciphers, which involve bits and bytes. Since most of us don't think in binary code, we need a computer to do the translation and math. Many commonly used protocols are in this class, including the AES protocol which are used in wifi WPA2, the current default wifi encryption protocol.A section is devoted to public key encryption and its underlying concepts of the use of large prime numbers and integer factorization. The math underlying this protocol is explored in some detail.The final section looks at practical applications. Hash functions, digital signatures, and the use of public keys and pretty good privacy (PGP) are exploredThe book is a good introduction to encryption methodology in the 21st century. While it is a Manga book, I don't believe the Manga format adds much value to this complex subject. If you've never worked in binary arithmetic and are not familiar with terms such as modulo operations, you may find this book very challenging.

Like all of the Manga Guide Series, co-published by No-Starch Press and the Japanese Omsha Ltd., is fun technically accurate and a painless way to get the foundations of a field. While the backstory is entertaining the obvious function of this line of books is to provide a easy and entertaining way to understand the technical and academic basis of a field. Unlike other introductory cryptography books this volume emphasizes (at an intermediate level) the mathematical functions and foundations of the field rather than providing easy programming examples that don't teach as much of the important basis of this field.Highly recommended, A fun and foundational comic-based text with genuine Japanese Manga.

We don't ordinarily think of cryptography in the context of a book-length comic, but here it is! In the Internet age, cryptography is everywhere. We all use passwords, but most of us don't know how they work. This book explains it all, beginning very simply but advancing rapidly into this complex subject. The comic book characters explain it very simply. This book will keep young readers interested, cover to cover, but there is a lot for advanced computer users and everyone in between. Highly recommended for all age groups.

I love this series because this book allows you to feel the subject closer. But make no mistake. There are no lines to laugh with great guffaws, even though this is manga. This is a serious book to learn the subject.

Richtig gutes Buch zum Einstieg in die Cryptography!

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Dans le style habituel des Manga Guides, celui-ci mêle une histoire futile mais appropriée à un exposé technique usuellement de bonne tenue. Malheureusement, l'exposé technique pêche ici non pas par ses choix, qu'on peut contester mais que je ne contesterai pas, mais par sa composition typographique. En effet, une erreur systématique vient polluer un trop grand nombre des formules mathématiques. Des notations d'exposant (x puissance y) se sont perdues et sont composées comme des notations de produit (x fois y). Là, de deux choses l'une ; soit on connait le sujet et on corrige dans sa tête en ronchonnant de plus en plus quand ça se répète ; soit on ne connaît pas le sujet et on ne comprend plus rien. Du coup, l'ouvrage rate complètement le but premier de cette série qui me semble être de présenter à un public assez large des sujets complexes en jouant sur une présentation plaisante. L'auteur remercie les relecteurs, mais on se demande ce qu'ils ont relu !