// Comparison

Exercices et problèmes de cryptographie vs Sécurité informatique: Which Should You Read?

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

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3/52023

Exercices et problèmes de cryptographie

Damien Vergnaud

A rigorous problem book for learning cryptography — over 150 corrected exercises with course summaries, for L3/master/engineering students — by a French academic cryptographer.

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4/52015

Sécurité informatique

Cours et exercices corrigés

Gildas Avoine, Pascal Junod, Philippe Oechslin, Sylvain Pasini

A rigorous academic course on the foundations of security — cryptography, authentication, access control — with corrected exercises, from a team of well-known French and Swiss cryptographers.

Read this if

Students and self-learners who want to actually practise cryptographic mathematics: corrected exercises on symmetric, public-key and (in recent editions) post-quantum primitives. Preface by Jacques Stern.

University students and engineers who want the formal foundations: cryptographic primitives, protocols, authentication and access control, with worked exercises to test understanding. Oechslin (rainbow tables) and Junod give the crypto real weight.

Skip this if

Readers wanting applied, deploy-this guidance or a narrative introduction; this is a university exercise book and assumes real mathematical maturity.

Readers looking for practical pentesting, tooling or a gentle introduction. This is a courses-and-exercises textbook with mathematical rigour, not a hands-on hacking guide.

Key takeaways

A genuine exercise-and-problem book — the corrected problems are the point, not prose.
Covers symmetric, asymmetric and, in recent editions, post-quantum constructions.
Best as a companion to a crypto course; pairs naturally with Avoine et al.

The strongest French-language treatment of the cryptographic and formal foundations of security, exercises included.
Written by serious cryptographers — Oechslin literally invented rainbow tables — so the crypto is correct and deep, not hand-waved.
Best used as a course companion; the corrected exercises are the real value over a pure narrative text.

How they compare

We rate Sécurité informatique higher (4/5 against 3/5 for Exercices et problèmes de cryptographie). For most readers, that means Sécurité informatique is the primary pick and Exercices et problèmes de cryptographie is a useful follow-up.

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

Exercices et problèmes de cryptographie and Sécurité informatique both cover Cryptography, Foundations, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

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