Textbook Revolution

Taking the Bite Out of Books

Security Engineering

Ross Anderson

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html

This book was published by Wiley in 2001 to rave reviews. The author is well-known and respected in the field. A forward thinker, he persuaded the publisher to allow him to offer the book online as individual chapter PDF files. Mr. Anderson writes that “I want to reach the widest possible audience, especially among poor students.”

The book is professionally edited and laid out, as you would expect from a major publisher like Wiley. The chapter-by-chapter PDF format leaves a lot to be desired, but as a reference tool it’s acceptable. The publishers didn’t take advantage of any of PDF’s advanced capabilities to make it more readable, but at least the text is centered in a single column. Mr. Anderson did convince his publishers to list the errata on the website; errata have been applied to the online files so you don’t have to correct them yourself. Otherwise, there are no hyperlinks, no index, and no search functions.

Here is a description of the first three chapters, taken from the text:

The first chapter sets out to define the subject matter by giving an overview of the secure distributed systems found in four environments: a bank, an air force base, a hospital, and the home. The second chapter is on security protocols, which lie at the heart of the subject: they specify how the players in a system—whether people, computers, or other electronic devices—communicate with each other. The third, on passwords and similar mechanisms, looks in more detail at a particularly simple kind of security protocol that is widely used to authenticate people to computers, and provides the foundation on which many secure systems are built.

Link to website

Available for purchase? Yes, see site for vendors