Whitfield Diffie

Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie (born June 5, 1944) is a US cryptographer and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography. Image File history File links Whitfield Diffie. ... Image File history File links Whitfield Diffie. ... June 5 is the 156th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (157th in leap years), with 209 days remaining. ... 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about: United States Wikinews has a related story: United States United States government CIA World Factbook Entry for United States House. ... Pre-19th century Leone Battista Alberti, polymath/universal genius, inventor of polyalphabetic substitution (see frequency analysis for the significance of this -- missed by most for a long time and dumbed down in the Vigenère cipher), and what may have been the first mechanical encryption aid. ... Public-key cryptography is a form of cryptography which generally allows users to communicate securely without having prior access to a shared secret key, by using a pair of cryptographic keys, designated as public key and private key, which are related mathematically. ...

He received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965. A Bachelor of Science (B.S., B.Sc. ... Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space and change. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research and educational institution located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is a world leader in science and technology, as well as in many other fields, including management, economics, linguistics, political science, and philosophy. ... 1965 was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar). ...

Diffie and Martin Hellman's paper New Directions in Cryptography was published in 1976. It introduced a radically new method of distributing cryptographic keys, which went far toward solving one of the fundamental problems of cryptography, key distribution. It has become known as Diffie-Hellman key exchange. The article also seems to have stimulated the almost immediate public development of a new class of encryption algorithms, the asymmetric key algorithms. Categories: Stub | 1945 births | Cryptographers ... 1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... See also: Topics in cryptography The security of all practical encryption schemes remains unproven, both for symmetric and asymmetric schemes. ... Diffie-Hellman key exchange (alternatively key agreement or key negotiation) is a cryptographic protocol which allows two parties to agree on a secret key over an insecure communications channel. ... In cryptography, an asymmetric key algorithm uses a pair of cryptographic keys to encrypt and decrypt. ...

Diffie was Manager of Secure Systems Research for Northern Telecom, where he designed the key management architecture for the PDSO security system for X.25 networks. Nortel Networks Corporation, formerly known as Northern Telecom Limited and now familiarly known simply as Nortel, is a telecommunications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Canada. ... X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for WAN networks using the phone or ISDN system as the networking hardware. ...

In 1991 he joined Sun Microsystems' SunLabs-West research facility (in Mountain View, California) as a Distinguished Engineer, working primarily on public policy aspects of cryptography. As of January 2004 Diffie remains with Sun, serving as its Chief Security Officer, and as a Vice President and Sun Fellow. 1991 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Sun Microsystems is a computer, semiconductor and software manufacturer headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in Silicon Valley. ... For the community near Martinez, California, see Mountain View, Contra Costa County, California. ... An engineer is someone who practices the engineering profession; a professional practitioner of engineering; someone who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems and produce goods for society. ... 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

In 1992 he was awarded a Doctorate in Technical Sciences (Honoris Causa) by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He is also a fellow of the Marconi Foundation and has received various awards from other organisations. 1992 is a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... ETH Zurich (from its German name Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, ETHZ) is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland. ...

Diffie and Susan Landau's book Privacy on the Line was published in 1998 on the politics of wiretapping and encryption. 1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...

References

• Steven Levy, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government — Saving Privacy in the Digital Age, ISBN 0140244328, 2001.
• Dr. Whitfield Diffie; Sun Microsystems; as of 11 January 2004.

Steven Levy is an American journalist who has written several books on computers, technology, cryptography, the Internet, cyber security and privacy. ... Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (ISBN 0140244328) is a book written by Steven Levy about cryptography, and was published in 2001. ... January 11 is the 11th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Wired Magazine biography of Whit Diffie
• SC Magazine Interview with Whit Diffie July 2004