Say No to the NSA! Until the mid-1970s, the National Security Agency held an iron grip on all research into computer-based cryptography in the USA. In this episode, we talk about how the NSA squashed all public research into cryptography in the 1950s and 1960s, but loosened its grip to work to develop the Digital Encryption Standard (DES) with IBM. Then, in the 1970s, mathematicians Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, and others went head-to-head with the NSA to make cryptography available to us all. Their research, and their courage, forever changed the face of modern cybersecurity.
Resources:
- Truman original memo regarding formation of NSA: https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/truman/truman-memo.pdf
- NSA American Cryptology During the Cold War 1945-1989: https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-histories/cold_war_iii.pdf
- Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government – Saving Privacy in the Digital Age: https://www.amazon.com/Crypto-Rebels-Government-Privacy-Digital/dp/B092RLYFTR/
- Paper: “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” by Claude Shannon: https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf
- J. A. Meyer letter to IEEE in July 1977: https://cryptome.org/hellman/1977-0707-Meyer-letter.pdf
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