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Did it really invent RSA, such that there was any actual capability of performing asymmetric encryption or signatures? I thought it was more like, one guy ther
by Canada 3y ago
Did it really invent RSA, such that there was any actual capability of performing asymmetric encryption or signatures?
I thought it was more like, one guy there had a pretty good idea that it was possible that he wrote about, but never developed it into anything practical.
Am I mistaken, and the whole working system was described?
- derefr 3y agoThe "pretty good idea" (Ellis' "non-secret encryption") was published about in 1969. Clifford Cocks found a workable algorithm for it — using prime factorization as the trapdoor function — in 1973. No cryptosystem was ever developed around the idea, by Cocks or GCHQ in general; they just sat on it as a classified secret. Then, in 1977, RSA was independently invented and published as both an algorithm and a full cryptosystem. I would definitely say that Cocks and RSA both independently discovered what we refer to as the RSA algorithm. We should maybe call it the Cocks–RSA algorithm.
- throw0101a 3y agoA PDF scan of the paper is now available, so you can judge for yourself: * https://web.archive.org/web/20180928121748/https://www.gchq.gov.uk/sites/default/files/document_files/Cliff%20Cocks%20paper%2019731120.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20180928121748/https://www.gchq.... IANAM (mathematician), but the formulae look RSA-like, though given the compute at the time, it may have been (too) expensive to try implementing.