4 ms·
I don't get it. Care to explain?
by brunoqc 11y ago
I don't get it. Care to explain?
- icelancer 11y agoEllis conceived of practical public-key crypto PRIOR to Diffie but it was classified at GCHQ. Diffie wanted to know how Ellis invented it after he had heard this was the case.
- solidangle 11y agoPublic-key encryption was supposedly invented at GCHQ by James Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson in 1975, one year before Diffie and Hellman published their paper. The work had to be kept secret though, so they never published it.
- DanBC 11y ago1973. Why the "supposedly"?
- _mhr_ 11y agoMy guess is that if it was not published at the time of discovery, there's no way to know for sure whether Ellis actually invented it before Diffie and Hellman.
- deckar01 11y agoThe irony is that such a scheme for publicly disclosing proof you have a piece of data without immediately publishing the data requires public key cryptography and digital signatures to be public knowledge. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof
- PakG1 11y agoThis is just like the thing between Newton and Leibniz on who invented calculus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz–Newton_calculus_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz–Newton_calculus_contro...
- drjesusphd 11y agoAs far as I'm concerned, that's the price one pays for doing research in secret.
- progressive_dad 11y agoThat's a pretty biting take on the matter. Who first taught you to hate your country?
- drjesusphd 11y ago"Hate my country?" What kind of nonsense is that?
- progressive_dad 11y agoThe same as saying one deserves less recognition because their research was done in secret.
- vehementi 11y agoWhat's the "I can't figure it out" part mean?
- gefh 11y agoEllis was working at GCHQ and couldn't openly talk about his work.
- signa11 11y agostephen levy's book 'crypto' is pretty nice which can give you a sort of 'fly-on-the-wall' view of the whole thing :)