Olivier Langlois's blog

The title is maybe misleading. It is not really a guide that will show you a procedure step by step 'how to do' to build secure systems as most engineering books do. It is rather a survey of the different security protocols used in various fields. Of course, you can learn from the success and errors described in the book and use this knowledge for developing a new system but you will have to connect the dots yourself.

The book is very dense in information and at first, its format was making it tedious for me to read. It did take around 3 chapters before I get accustomed to the format. Once, this aspect was out of the way, this book became amazingly interesting. It describes systems used in banking, by diplomats, military, for nuclear weapons, police, set-up box TV decoders smart cards and anti tampering devices in general, spies, biometric authentication, etc.. and focus on the security protocols used by these systems and then highlights the weaknesses of the systems and how people have figured out how to workaround these protocols.

The best quality of the book is that it will help you to better understand the mindset of a secure system designer and a system hacker.