03Jan09 on Nostr: 47 years ago today on November 1, 1976, Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman ...
47 years ago today on November 1, 1976, Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman published “New Directions in Cryptography”, with credits to Ralph Merkle and Claude Shannon.
The paper begins: “We stand today on the brink of a revolution in cryptography.”
The paper ends: “The last characteristic which we note in the history of cryptography is the division between amateur and professional cryptographers. Skill in production cryptanalysis has always been heavily on the side of the professionals, but innovation, particularly in the design of new types of cryptographic systems, has come primarily from the amateurs. Thomas Jefferson, a cryptographic amateur, invented a system which was still in use in World War II, while the most noted cryptographic system of the twentieth century, the rotor machine, was invented simultaneously by four separate people, all amateurs. We hope this will inspire others to work in this fascinating area in which participation has been discouraged in the recent past by a nearly total government monopoly.”
Pause for a moment to contemplate the profound effect on humanity of the Diffie–Hellman–Merkle key exchange.
Download:
https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf 
Published at
2023-11-01 12:58:23Event JSON
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