James Ellis was forerunner of Cocks' PKC in 1970, "conceived of the possibility of "non-secret encryption", more commonly termed <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography>public-key cryptography." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Ellis Diffie-Hellman is sometimes suggested to have been aided by NSA whispered nudging of GCHQ classified efforts. Diffie denies this. To be sure, crypto leaking strengths and vulns is inherent in crypto wars. Not many know of Diffie's TEMPEST hair which bypasses NSA's TSCM during visits. At 05:04 PM 12/19/2018, you wrote:
On Saturday, December 15, 2018, 11:10:46 PM PST, grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:
<https://www.wired.com/1993/02/crypto-rebels/>https://www.wired.com/1993/02/crypto-rebels/ Author: Steven Levy security 02.01.93 12:00 pm
Crypto Rebels
It's the FBIs, NSAs, and Equifaxes of the world versus a swelling movement of Cypherpunks, civil libertarians, and millionaire hackers.
[snip]
By 1977, three members of this new community created a set of algorithms that implemented the Diffie-Hellman scheme. Called RSA for its foundersMIT scientiists Rivest, Shamir, and Adlemanit offered encryption that was likely to be stronger than the Data Encryption Standard (DES), a government-approved alternative that does not use public keys. The actual strength of key-based cryptographic systems rests largely in the size of the keyâin other words, how many bits of information make up the key. The larger the key, the harder it is to break the code. While DES, which was devised at IBM's research lab, limits key size to 56 bits, RSA keys could be any size. (The trade-off was that bigger keys are unwieldy, and RSA runs much more slowly than DES.) But DES had an added burden: Rumors abounded that the NSA had forced IBM to intentionally weaken the system so that the government could break DES-encoded messages. RSA did not have that stigma. (The NSA has denied these rumors.)
We have since learned that what became the RSA system started out by being invented by British GCHQ employee Clifford Cocks. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks
"Clifford Christopher Cocks <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Bath>CB <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_of_the_Royal_Society>FRS (born 28 December 1950) is a British mathematician and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographer>cryptographer. In 1973, while working at the United Kingdom <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters>Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), he invented a <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_cryptography>public key cryptography algorithm equivalent to what would become (in 1978) the <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(algorithm)>RSA algorithm.
The idea was <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information>classified information and his insight remained hidden for 24 years, despite being independently invented by <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Rivest>Rivest, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shamir>Shamir, and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Adleman>Adleman in 1977.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks#cite_note-4>[4]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks#cite_note-5>[5] Public-key cryptography using <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_factorisation>prime factorisation is now part of nearly every Internet transaction.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks#cite_note-6>[6]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks#cite_note-7>[7] Ã [end of quote from Wikipedia.]
I, Jim Bell, had my "Forrest Gump" moment, I believe during the first days of February 1977. Very soon after my return to the MIT campus, I was walking through the hallways of Building 2, the Mathematics Department. Posted, behind glass, were what I now believe was a statement of the RSA system. I think they had posted it in order to irrevocably make it no longer secret.
I suppose if I wanted to pump up my credentials, I could say that I immediately recognized the importance of this revelation. Unfortunately, my reaction (if put into text) was far closer to "Huh???".
Jim Bell