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30 Years of Public Key Cryptography

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the happy-cjsuiebz dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Public key crypto turned 30 last night, and the biggest names in crypto turned out to celebrate at an event hosted at the Computer History Museum. Voltage Security teamed with RSA to bring together some of the most famous cryptographers of yesterday (Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman) and today (Dan Boneh), along with luminaries Ray Ozzie, Brian Snow, and Jim Bidzos. From the ZDNet article: 'NYT reporter John Markoff, who has covered Silicon Valley for 30 years, was master of ceremonies, and started off by saying that no technology has had a more profound impact than cryptography, and that public-key cryptography has been underappreciated for its role in the Internet. Without public key cryptography, ecommerce would be an idea as opposed to an enabler of billions of daily transactions.' You can view the podcast and pictures of the event at the Voltage Security site.."

4 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Celebration! by krell · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let's celebrate the anniversary! Party at d$3vF434. $D%f$sdsN4. Don't miss it!

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    Where were you when the voynix came?
  2. first papers on PKC by ei4anb · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It was a fun time.

    I was a math undergrad interested in large prime numbers and numerical computing when the first hints on what RS&A were doing came out in Scientific American. At that time I had only 3 years programming experience and it was a big thrill to get a public key crypto email system working (first in Pascal on a DEC-20) but I only distributed it to a small group as the university was not yet on the Internet.

    I told the story to PZ at a conference about 8 years ago and we had a good laugh wondering how things might have developed differently had that program been distributed on Usenet by someone outside the USA!

  3. May be older than 30 years old by Yahma · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Historians of science will certainly spend time sorting out the various claims. David Kahn, the author of the best selling history The Codebreakers, said that he recently asked the National Security Agency to declassify some documents so he could write the proper history of public key cryptography. He said an NSA staff member told him, "I've spoken to the guys who did this, but they don't want to be interviewed now." This suggests that the NSA also may have discovered public-key systems or had a hand in exploring them. Kahn hopes that the NSA will follow in Britain's lead so an accurate history can be written.

    It is likely that the NSA discovered public key Cryptography in the late 60's or early 70's. Public Key Cryptography may be as old as 40 years old at this point, but without clarification from the NSA, we will never be certain.


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    Yahma
    Proxy Storm - Free Anonymous Proxy Service for security conscious individuals.
  4. GCHQ in 1973! by spoonist · · Score: 4, Informative

    GCHQ developed public key cryptography in 1973.