// Comparison

Maîtriser la cryptographie d'aujourd'hui et de demain vs Social Engineering: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Foundations, 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

4/52018

Social Engineering

The Science of Human Hacking

Christopher Hadnagy

Christopher Hadnagy's broad procedural reference on social engineering as a discipline — recon, pretexting, elicitation, microexpressions, and the structured engagement model his consultancy operationalized.

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.

Working SE practitioners, awareness-program leads, and people building structured social-engineering engagements who want a single reference for the discipline. Stronger on framework and process than Mitnick; the elicitation and influence chapters draw heavily on Cialdini and Ekman.

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.

Readers wanting Mitnick-style war stories or modern AI-driven SE tradecraft (deepfake voice clones, LLM-assisted spearphish). Hadnagy's controversial separation from DEF CON in 2022 is also worth being aware of as context for the author rather than the book.

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.

SE is a structured engagement, not a stunt; the book operationalizes the kill chain in a way most practitioners can adapt directly.
Microexpression and influence material is borrowed but well-applied; the chapters on elicitation are the book's most cited.
The framework (information gathering → pretext → influence → exit) is the book's lasting contribution and the implicit syllabus for most modern SE training.

How they compare

Maîtriser la cryptographie d'aujourd'hui et de demain and Social Engineering are both rated 4/5 in our catalog. Pick by topic preference and reading style rather than by rating.

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

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

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