Diffie, Hellman scoop $1m Turing Award for key work on crypto keys

[jbreher]

Hey - it's crypto.

RSA 2016 The Association for Computing Machinery used the RSA 2016 conference to announce the winners of its annual Turing Award: encryption wizards Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman.

"Naturally I'm thrilled by this by this award, but thrilled for cryptography," Diffie said. "It's the third time the Turing award has been given to cryptographers. The fact that it is so central to the field is amazing."

Diffie and Hellman published their seminal paper New Directions in Cryptography [PDF] in 1976 and it outlined the first public-key cryptography system, allowing people to encrypt data using publicly exchanged keys and decrypt information using their secret private keys.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/01/diffie_and_hellman_scoop_turing_award_for_key_work_on_crypto/

[arcticlava]

Must be sweet to get the recognition . . . .  um, 40 yrs later

[OROBTC]

...

The Apple/FBI encryption of the iPhone dispute may have something to do with the award, my guess is that this Turing Award will encourage a broader debate re encryption, including that for Bitcoin.

I personally believe that everyone should have the perfect right to encrypt their communications.

There are plenty of good tools that Law Enforcement can use without threatening our liberties.