The Open Source Zone

The text is very well-written and develops the ideas exceptionally beautifully. At the very beginning, the skeleton of the SSL protocol is developed through an example - the "Toy Security Protocol". Obviously, the book is useful for practitioners, not cryptography students, but it has just enough material to give its intended audience a sense for the black art behind the stuff!

Besides introducing the specifics of SSL, there are other useful material -- one example is chapter 11 ("Contrasting Approaches") which fine-tunes one's understanding of why/when one uses SSL. Other impressive examples are chapters that discuss performance issues and programming pitfalls. There are also lots of historical notes and comments that add meaningful context to the subject material.

I had already read 2 (and a half!) other books on this subject. Early on while reading this book, I realized I have found the "definitive" guide!

This author seems to know everything, every little detail and background. All those confusing security terminologies are well explained.

Not only is this an extremely useful book on explaining SSL/TLS, but its comparisons of those protocols to other security protocols is priceless. For example, the concise explanation of IPSec is far better than entire other books devoted to the topic. I can't recommend this highly enough!!

This is a great book. Well written, good diagrams, very good overview as well as detailed data dump of the protocol. I highly recommend.

simply put there is no finer book on the subject. this is to SSL and TLS what TCP/IP illustrated is to Ip networking. <p>you wont learn much about crytography here (you'll definitely want a book on that, too), but you will learn the nuances of how SSL and TLS work. this is, to the best of my knowledge, the first such attempt at this kind of handbook. and i find it succeeds very well. rescorla's attention to detail shows in everything, and that's exatcly what a book like this needs.<p>reccomended ...