Slashdot Mirror
The Encryption Pioneer Who Was Written Out of History
nk497 writes "Clifford Cocks is one of three British men who developed an encryption system while working for the UK government in the early 1970s, but was forced to keep the innovation quiet for national security reasons. Just a few years later, their Public Encryption Key was developed separately by US researchers at Stanford and MIT, and eventually evolved into the RSA encryption algorithm, which now secures billions of transactions on the internet every day. 'The first I knew about [the US discovery] was when I read about it in Scientific American. I opened it one lunchtime and saw a description and thought, "Ah, that's what we did,"' he said. 'You don't go into the business to get external credit and recognition — quite the opposite. Quite honestly, the main reaction was one of complete surprise that this had actually been discovered outside.' The UK trio have now won recognition for their accomplishment in the form of the Milestone Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers."
If you sign an NDA, don't complain about lack of recognition...
The Brits are pretty amazing. It's like they are a step ahead of everyone in this field. I imagine not brushing your teeth gives you a few minutes extra every day, and that adds up.
I'm kidding of course. But the British, maybe because of brains, maybe because of necessity, have been pushing the boundaries of computation for almost two hundred years. We owe a great debt of gratitude towards them.
But they were also kind of dicks about that whole independence thing. So it all evens out.
Maybe they didn't want to admit that cocks had been working out well for them, after all.
Maybe he should have protected his work. Perhaps with some kind of ... encryption?
So that's what Al Gore meant when he said he discovered the intertubes...
It's really not a milestone for anything if nobody can build on your results. It's certainly a great achievement to come up with an approach like that. However it contributes nothing to science if you don't publish it - the contribution was made by others. They weren't written out of history - they opted out.
There were two reasons for not going ahead with patents: one was the view that it should stay classified, because it was for our own use. The other was the advice we got that this is mathematics and couldn’t be patented even if we wanted to. The rules in the US are different, which is why it was possible for it to be patented eventually in the US.
I thought even US law said that purely mathematical algorithms couldn't be patented? Can anyone shed light on why this was patentable (or is this another example of the USPTO letting through something they shouldn't?)
I'd tell a UDP joke, but you may not get it. I'd tell a TCP joke, but I'd have to keep repeating it until you got it.
A pioneer is someone who blazes a trail that others follow. If the trail is hidden, and no one is able or willing to follow, then there is no pioneer. At that point he is just a guy hiding in a jungle.
The British team may have been first to discover something, but that is not what it means to be a pioneer. Ultimately, they contributed nothing to the field of encryption since their work was superseded by the time it became public.
I don't believe you.
In effect, what you're saying is that multiple independent researchers could make the same contemporaneous discovery.
I think Dr. Cocks would agree with me when I say I find that totally inconceivable.
It was kept a secret so it couldn't benefit humanity (and public key encryption has been an enormous benefit). I don't really care if it was their job, I have really very little time for the silly secrecy around the "security" services anyway. Most of what they do is policework, and the police aren't a state secret above the law.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
So. Patenting. Obviousness.
All those going on about how RSA is patentable even though software because it was so innovative. Well if someone else had invented it too, it can't have been all that unobvious. It was an idea whose time had come and patent or not, it would be available.
One software patent we now KNOW didn't need a patent and shouldn't get one.
Moe: Phone call for C. Cocks. C Cocks? Anyone?
If you just do a little time travel then you could have verified his claim like I just did.
Home of The Suki Series
The History repeats, Columbus announce his discover. The US Researchers published their work. But someone was there before.
Who is "The Discoverer"?
Dude does groundbreaking work, work gets suppressed by British government for reasons of national security, dude gets screwed.
At least this guy didn't then get force-fed oestrogen by the government until he killed himself, which is something I suppose.
GCHQ was ready to talk of this issue and had all the press like 'kits' ready for a nice PR peek in 1984.
Then came the Peter Writes's Spycatcher book.
Thatcher was destroying any trace of union activity within the GCHQ at the time to, so the PKE release was dropped until 1997.
In the 1970's the NSA and GCHQ did not know what to do with it.
With "no" internet, one idea floated was nuke go codes.
The more interesting issue was the 1985 quadripartite (UK, US, German, French) to keep DES open to the NSA/GCHQ but safe from commercial rivals/hackers.
PKE was fought later with Clipper, key recovery, key escrow.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This story is an amazing coincidence. I discovered relativity before Einstein, but I never published my findings. Do you agree recognition is long overdue?
I stole Einstein's research, applied it to building a time machine, then went back in time and discovered it before him. I _still_ didn't get recognition and worse still, his research now claims that time travel is impossible so I can't try it again.
http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2227
Here RSA mentions that because brits don't go to the dentist DES is dead.
If only we could factor large prime numbers as Bill Gates suggested.
"Dick" is a common british name, so his parents could have called him Dick Cock
what about Calculus. Leibnitz and Newton within months of each other. Newton came up with it first, but didn't publish, then Leibnitz published, and Newton got annoyed, published, claimed he was first and there was a big kerfuffle.
In the end we actually use Leibnitz notation for calculus, even though most people don't know who he was, and think Newton invented it.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
It's a good thing the Official Secrets Act prevented this from being news at the time. I'm not sure reporters could have kept a straight face reporting on the "Cocks Algorithm."
Most of them are arts graduates with about as much scientific and technical knowledge as a comatose slug. Nothing has changed. They wouldn't know technical innovation if it kicked them in the balls. While this country his still run by people who think quoting shakespeare parrot fashion is the last word in intellect then we stand no chance.
what about Calculus. Leibnitz and Newton within months of each other. Newton came up with it first, but didn't publish, then Leibnitz published, and Newton got annoyed, published, claimed he was first and there was a big kerfuffle. In the end we actually use Leibnitz notation for calculus, even though most people don't know who he was, and think Newton invented it.
Certain people in college kept telling me that it was invented in Arabia long before those men were born. Eventually I grew skeptical.
This story is an amazing coincidence. I discovered relativity before Einstein, but I never published my findings. Do you agree recognition is long overdue?
I stole Einstein's research, applied it to building a time machine, then went back in time and discovered it before him. I _still_ didn't get recognition and worse still, his research now claims that time travel is impossible so I can't try it again.
I went back in time and posted before you, even made sure it was farther upthread than your post.
Home of The Suki Series
This story is an amazing coincidence. I discovered relativity before Einstein, but I never published my findings. Do you agree recognition is long overdue?
No worries, Mr Smith. We all knew it was you all along.
Just that every time the editor for their papers saw the list of names at the top with "C. Cocks" in it they always thought it was a childish prank and erased his name.
To this day every time he gets pulled over the cops say "Come on buddy, your REAL ID this time".
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Sounds like something every teenage boy need to hide their porn collection.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Why should anyone get recognition if they keep their discovery a secret?
Knuth's TAOCP, Volume 2, Third Edition, Page 407:
"Historical note: It was revealed in 1998 that Clifford Cocks had considered encoding messages by the transformation $x^{pq} mod pq$ already in 1973, but his work was kept secret".
And that feels like the correct amount of recognition.
See? Now that's recognition. :) Who cares who was really first if later generations think you were?
According to the cryptography textbook I use and the article, this was made public in 1997. He is also mentioned in the textbook when detailing the development the RSA-algorithm, so I wouldn't say he's been written out of history. Introduction to Cryptography with Coding theory 2nd edition by Wade Trappe, Lawrence Washington
it leads to people acting on peer pressure. we try to discourage that sort of thing.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
My brother invented the internal combustion engine.
He was very sad when I told him it had been done before.
This is a true story.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Much of Cocks' work is documented in Simon Singh's fantastic treatise on cryptography and stenography through history, 'The Code Book'. This includes thoughts by Cocks' and James Ellis on the secrecy of their work, and their comfort at that -- they knew what they were getting into. Especially telling are Ellis' quotes -- as he died ~1 month before the public announcement was made...
"E=mc2"? I had "F=mc2"! So close...
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
... but he still relied on security through obscurity
That's what I'm hearing here....
...and also Cocks.
what about Calculus. Leibnitz and Newton within months of each other. Newton came up with it first, but didn't publish, then Leibnitz published, and Newton got annoyed, published, claimed he was first and there was a big kerfuffle.
In the end we actually use Leibnitz notation for calculus, even though most people don't know who he was, and think Newton invented it.
Certain people in college kept telling me that it was invented in Arabia long before those men were born. Eventually I grew skeptical.
You're thinking of Algebra.
Hardly written out of history. As I recall he got a whole chapter in "The Code Book" . I would bet that most people familiar with RSA or Diffie Helman have read that.
so how many RSA patents are now invalidated?
I hate to do this, but no AC has jumped in with a helpful "whoosh" and I'm feeling particularly pedantic today, so I'm going to give you a short lesson in mathematics, the internet, and life in general. I hope you find it useful (I'd like to think you will).
First, as I hope you realize, my post was a joke. A joke wrapped around what I think is an interesting idea, but a joke nonetheless. Since you didn't get the joke I have to assume you didn't get the idea. Let's start with the idea and work our way up from there. You're right about Newton and Leibniz, but what you're missing is that a lot of ideas in math have the same history; that of being developed independently by different people at around the same time. In fact, if you crack open a random math text and point to a random theorem, there is a good chance that there is either an ongoing controversy about whether the person after whom it's named is it's discoverer, or that person is uncontroversially recognized as not being responsible. This phenomena is not limited to math. Inventions and other feats of engineering have the habit of popping up in different places at the same time. Things as everyday as the locomotive, light bulb, and telephone all have multiple independent inventors credibly claiming paternity. The thing to understand here, is that this is not rare, but common. Cocks is a mathematician; he knows about the calculus kerfuffle, he knows that some things named after Newton were probably Simpson, many things named after Gauss were really other people, and many things named after other people were really Gauss (who supposedly kept a stack of unpublished theorems on his desk to hand off to editors when they had space in journals they needed to fill). What I find so interesting is that, Cocks, who knows all of this, is still surprised when he learns that another team of researchers has independently invented the same algorithm he and his team had only a few years earlier. Do you get it yet? Maybe? Let's continue.
Take a moment to reread my post and GP. You heard the Newton/Leibniz story for the first time in Calculus, right? Just like everyone else on the planet. What do you think are the odds that someone posting on Slashdot has never been in that class? I understand that text, divorced from tone of voice and body language, can be hard to interpret, but look at the tone of GP. It's very silly, right? Look at the tone of my post; much more serious, right? What seems more likely: that I'm expressing sincere skepticism at GP's claim of discovering relativity, or that I'm using a little irony to make a point? Feel free to open up a tab and google the definition of irony, I'll still be here when you get back. Okay? Good. Look how my own mock surprise at the idea of multiple independent discovery mirrors that expressed by Cocks in the article. I know, I know, you didn't RTFA. I know that 90% of Slashdot is trash, but there's a solid 10% there, so please, at least sometimes, RTFA. You'll be a smarter person, maybe a better person, for it and girls will like you more*. Now you have the idea and the joke. Is it funny? It's probably not funny after all this. That's okay, it wasn't very funny to begin with.
Finally, please, use some fucking punctuation. Your post is almost unreadable. It's hard to tell who you're saying claimed they were what first. If I didn't already know exactly what you were talking about when I read your post, I wouldn't have been able to figure it out. If you can't communicate your ideas to other people, they're effectively worthless. What if Newton discovered the calculus, but then was unable to explain it to anyone? The paternity of calculus would be even more fucked up then it already is (which is something no one wants).
So, in summary, multiple independent discovery/invention is common, have the self awareness to recognize in yourself that which you see in other people, think longer before you write (or speak), and please, please, please, for fucks sake, use some punctuation and grammar.
I s
Yes and it was so totally a shame when the Wrong brothers invented the airplane first but the credit went to a couple other guys.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
that's what you get for workin' for the man, spook.
Genealogically humorous!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace
If you want reconigtion on crypto, keep yourself away from the military.
What is it that they say about explaining your own jokes? Woosh indeed.
That's because you're no Einstein, and neither is the guy he did that to.
Yes. What's tragic about that is that Darwin sat on the theory of evolution for years. He though publishing it would anger God or some such nonsense. When Wallace wrote to him to share his thoughts, Darwin thought "Screw God! I have to beat this guy!" PS. The Mod who flagged that a troll seriously needs to get a sense of humor.
> I don't believe you.
I did. I really, really did. Honest.
So know you know that the Brits were 20 years ahead in computing and 20 years ahead in crypto-analysis do you think that 256AES is safe?
All your secrets are belong to UK.
you didn't know that?
oh shit, did i just reveal...
nevermind
(whistling)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If this is true then some patents may prove invalid.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.