// Comparison

Maîtriser la cryptographie d'aujourd'hui et de demain 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.

Intermediate

4/52026

Maîtriser la cryptographie d'aujourd'hui et de demain

Des bases mathématiques aux standards post-quantiques

Mbaye Ngom

A cryptography engineer specializing in information-system security mechanisms, who also teaches the subject, builds from cryptography's mathematical foundations up to today's post-quantum standards.

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

French-speaking readers who want a complete progression through cryptography, from mathematical foundations to recent post-quantum standards, written by someone who teaches the subject.

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 who want only developer-facing applied cryptography (library choice, implementation) without the mathematical grounding; this book builds understanding from the foundations rather than skipping past them.

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

One of the few French-language books to explicitly cover post-quantum standards, still a thin spot in the existing catalog.
Structured as a pedagogical progression, from mathematical foundations to current standards, by an author who teaches cryptography.
Fills a real gap: the catalog's existing French-language cryptography titles (La science du secret, Exercices et problèmes de cryptographie) are older or narrower in scope.

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 4/5 for Maîtriser la cryptographie d'aujourd'hui et de demain). For most readers, that means Serious Cryptography is the primary pick and Maîtriser la cryptographie d'aujourd'hui et de demain is a useful follow-up.

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

Maîtriser la cryptographie d'aujourd'hui et de demain and Serious Cryptography both cover Cryptography, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

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