This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th IMA Conference on Cryptography and Coding, held in Cirencester, UK in December 1995. The volume presents 22 full revised papers selected from 48 submissions together with five invited full papers and three abstracts on the mathematical theory and practice of cryptography and coding; continuing advances in these strongly related areas are crucial for the security and reliability of data communication, processing, and storage. Among the topics addressed are linear codes, error-correcting codes, decoding, key distribution, authentication, hash functions, block ciphers, cryptanalysis, and electronic cash.