Two cryptographers who "lay the foundation for today’s online security industry" have won the 2016 Turing Award.
The award, which recognises major and important contributions to computing, was given to Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman for their "critical contributions" to modern cryptography.
Diffie, who is former chief security officer for Sun Microsystems, and Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford University, developed the technology to communicate privately over a secure channel. That process is now used by millions of people every day when they use online banking, shop online or send emails. It is also seen by privacy advocates as being under attack by governments who want to unpick its secrets in the name of security.
Alexander Wolf, president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), said that Diffie and Hellman had done "groundbreaking" work. "Today, the subject of encryption dominates the media, is viewed as a matter of national security, impacts government-private sector relations, and attracts billions of dollars in research and development," he said in a statement.
"In 1976, Diffie and Hellman imagined a future where people would regularly communicate through electronic networks and be vulnerable to having their communications stolen or altered. Now, after nearly 40 years, we see that their forecasts were remarkably prescient."
The Diffie-Hellman protocol allowed for two strangers -- who had potentially never met -- to privately share information. Before their work, the only way to send encrypted messages was over a public channel, via a public encryption key and a private decryption key. According to the ACM, Diffie and Hellman's asymmetric system is "designed in such a way that the calculation of the private key from the public key is not feasible computationally, even though one uniquely determines the other" -- making it far more secure. "Public-key cryptography is fundamental for our industry," said Andrei Broder, Google Distinguished Scientist. "The ability to protect private data rests on protocols for confirming an owner's identity and for ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of communications. These widely used protocols were made possible through the ideas and methods pioneered by Diffie and Hellman."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
