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Codebreaking vs Crypto Dictionary: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Cryptography, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.

Beginner

4/52023

Codebreaking

A Practical Guide

Elonka Dunin, Klaus Schmeh

Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh teach classical cryptanalysis through real, unsolved ciphers, from 19th-century newspaper personal ads to wartime telegrams, using free tools like CrypTool 2.

Beginner

4/52021

Crypto Dictionary

500 Tasty Tidbits for the Curious Cryptographer

Jean-Philippe Aumasson

Jean-Philippe Aumasson's alphabetical, opinionated reference on cryptographic terms, primitives, attacks and folklore. Snack-format companion to Serious Cryptography.

Read this if

Hobbyist codebreakers and security people who want the historical and puzzle-solving side of cryptography, not the mathematical theory. Dunin maintains the web's reference list of unsolved ciphers and Schmeh is the most-published cryptology author alive, so the case studies are the real, still-open ones.

Anyone who reads cryptography papers, blog posts, or CTF write-ups and keeps hitting half-remembered terms. Keep it on your desk: 500 entries, each a paragraph or two, alphabetical, opinionated. The crypto reference you'll actually use.

Skip this if

Readers who want modern applied cryptography, algorithm design, or anything about securing systems; this is classical/historical cipher-breaking (substitution, polyalphabetic, transposition), not AES or TLS. Pair with Serious Cryptography or Cryptography Engineering for that side.

Readers wanting a textbook flow or systematic foundation. The book is a dictionary by design; pair with Real-World Cryptography (Wong) or Serious Cryptography (Aumasson) for sequential learning.

Key takeaways

Teaches cryptanalysis on real, unsolved historical ciphers rather than textbook exercises, which keeps the puzzle-solving stakes genuine.
CrypTool 2 and other free software get hands-on coverage, so the skills transfer to actually attacking a ciphertext, not just reading about it.
Several of the book's case studies remain unsolved mysteries today; readers are explicitly invited to take a crack at them.

Aumasson's opinionated entries ("don't use", "use this instead", "avoid for this reason") condense decades of practitioner judgment into one-paragraph verdicts.
Term coverage spans symmetric, asymmetric, hash, post-quantum, side-channel, and crypto-folklore; few references this small are this comprehensive.
The book's value compounds over time: every paper or write-up sends you back to it.

How they compare

Codebreaking and Crypto Dictionary are both rated 4/5 in our catalog. Pick by topic preference and reading style rather than by rating.

Both books target beginner-level readers, so the choice is about topic, not difficulty.

Codebreaking and Crypto Dictionary both cover Cryptography, Reference, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

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