Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, and Ralph Merkle would become famous for Public Key Cryptography, while Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman would become famous for RSA, the most practical implementation of Public Key Cryptography. However, it would be discovered many years later that in England, they had been anticipated, but could not reveal it due to military secrecy. On April 1, 1965, cryptographer James Ellis joined the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, a top-secret office founded as a successor to Bletchley Park after the Second World War. Ellis had arrived, having understood the basic idea: he suggested that Alice purposely add white noise to the communication and accurately measure it, thus remaining the only one who could remove it, thus reading the cleartext message. However, she needed a special “one-way function” that could only be reversed with special information. But since Ellis isn’t a mathematician, he can’t find it. That is, until September 1973, when a mathematician, Clifford Cocks, a recent graduate of Cambridge University, joins the team. Cocks immediately realizes that prime factorization was an excellent candidate. In little more than half an hour, a new hire on his first job, he congratulates himself: “Great, they gave me a problem and I solved it!” But he doesn’t fully grasp the enormous significance of what he’s done. And in any case, he couldn’t have told anyone except his wife, since she also worked at GCHQ. Early the following year, cryptographer Malcolm Williamson also works on the problem. Malcolm and Cliff were longtime friends, having attended the same school, Manchester Grammar School (whose motto is Sapere aude\u2014Dare to be wise). Williamson tries to prove that Cocks was wrong and that Public Key Cryptography is obviously impossible. He fails. In September 1982, Whitfield Diffie decided to travel to England at his own expense with his wife to verify the rumors circulating in the industry and speak face-to-face with James Ellis. They met in a pub. Mary, Whitfield’s wife, immediately realized she was dealing with a true gentleman, with a noble soul and a kind spirit, old-fashioned. Whitfield Diffie asked James Ellis directly: “Tell me: how did you invent Public Key Cryptography?” After a long pause, Ellis murmured: “Let’s just say I don’t know how much I can say. Let me just say that you in the United States have done much more with these things than we have.” Only on December 18, 1997, did the contribution of Ellis, Cocks, and Williamson become public with a “talk” by Cocks. Sadly, James Ellis had died a few days earlier, on November 25, 1997, at the age of 73.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, and Ralph Merkle would become famous for Public Key Cryptography, while…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-s-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n