// Comparison

Exercices et problèmes de cryptographie vs Serious Cryptography: Which Should You Read?

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

Advanced

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.

Intermediate

5/52024

Serious Cryptography

A Practical Introduction to Modern Encryption

Jean-Philippe Aumasson

Jean-Philippe Aumasson's working introduction to modern cryptography, written for engineers who need both intuition and enough mathematical depth to evaluate the choices a library is making for them.

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.

Engineers who already know what crypto to use and want to understand why it works at the primitive level. The middle book in the modern crypto stack: deeper than Real-World Cryptography, shallower than the academic textbooks.

Skip this if

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

Beginners or readers who haven't yet decided which primitives to use; start with Wong first. Also wrong for cryptography researchers who need formal proofs.

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.

Modern primitives can be understood by engineers, given the right framing — Aumasson's choice to bound the math is the book's defining design decision.
The 2nd edition (2024) covers post-quantum cryptography (Kyber, Dilithium, SPHINCS+) at the depth a deploying engineer actually needs.
The chapters on hash-function attacks (length extension, multi-collisions) are the clearest in print and explain why half of the production bugs in HMAC-adjacent code happen.

How they compare

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

Exercices et problèmes de cryptographie is pitched at advanced level. Serious Cryptography is pitched at intermediate level. Read the easier one first if you're not yet comfortable with the topic.

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

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