Bruce writes:
> An excellent reference on the subject is "Applied Cryptography" by Bruce
> Schneier. I'm preparing a review of it for the list, but it's one of the
> best reference books I've ever seen, on _any_ subject. It includes C source
> code for the algorithms, and careful cryptographic analysis of each
> algorithm as well as information on secure procedures. It's one of the few
> books which caused me to think "I didn't pay enough for this!"
 
I second everything Bruce said.  In fact, "Applied Cryptography" was one of
my Book of the Month selections a while back, and I posted a reasonably long
review of it, which you can probably dredge up out of the list archives if
you care.  It will also tell you everything you want to know about one-way
hash / message digest algorithms including MD5
 
In short, *everybody* needs to read this book (or at least the first third
of it) even if you don't *think* you care about the subject.
 
G.