RSA encryption – Cryptography

In an attempt to bring RSA encryption-level security to the masses, Zimmerman released Pretty Good Privacy(PGP). But in his attempt to do so, Zimmerman had one large issue: The FBI had taken notice of his activities and were frightened. They were frightened because they believed that they would not longer be able to wiretap criminals and bring them to justice in Zimmermans’s attempt to bring NSA-proof security to the masses. Zimmer eventually published the PGP onto the internet through a friend, which the FBI deemed as “exporting munitions” because a foreign government or hostile power could have easily accessed it. This remains problematic for a number of reasons, but ultimately Zimmerman was wrong in publishing software on the internet because he did so with the intent to deceive the US government and provide top grade security for all, law-abiding citizens and criminals alike.

When anyone publishes anything on the internet, they should be able to face the consequences of their action. We’ve seen in the present how past videos or texts can come back to derail an established politician’s career. Anything posted on the web never truly disappears, and people need to be aware of this fact. Critics state that because Zimmer hadn’t actually sent the software to a foreign government, he shouldn’t have been pursued by the FBI; but the fact remains, Zimmerman published his work in an attempt to deceive the US government. And in fact, another more compelling argument remains: if country A sells weapons to country B, and country B is currently engaged in a genocide and A is aware of this fact, then Country A is at least partially to blame for providing the tools with which that genocide occurs. A key component of this argument is that those who provide the tools must know that their tools can and will be used to enact harm, and Zimmerman certainly fell true to this.

In all, this question is one that is difficult to answer, but if cryptanalysts publish software that has circumvented the government’s wished and that they know will be used for harm, such as Zimmerman, then such cryptanalysts are at least partially responsible for the consequences that ensue.

Ideas and inventions are not concocted inside of a vacuum. They grow from a wide array of preexisting knowledge and ideas already present in the scientific community from public contributions. However, there exists a break in this flow of information; as Singh points out in chapter 6 of The Code Book, government findings are often kept under lock and key. This was certainly the case for the work being done at England’s GCHQ in the 20th century. Researchers Ellis, Cocks and Williamson were working diligently on a solution to the problem of exchanging keys in the cryptographic world, and their findings culminated in a successful solution to their mission in 1973. But, because of the highly classified status of their work at the time, their discovery was unbeknown to the world until it was finally released almost 30 years later.

Meanwhile, without knowledge of the British intelligence, the same problem was being attacked by academics on the American front. On the West Coast, researchers Diffie, Hellman and Merkle theorized a solution to the key exchange problem by implementing asymmetrical ciphers. MIT scholars Rivest, Shamir and Adleman successfully implemented the idea in a working system that we still use today. The RSA encryption algorithm was officially patented in 1979.

So who are the true inventors of public key cryptography? Although the credit goes mainly to the men abbreviated by the letters R, S and A, I would argue that all of the parties deserve recognition. The combined efforts of both the British and American groups resulted in a successful solution to the problem at hand. Their discoveries took place six years apart, but the latter success did so without knowledge of the prior. Rivest, Shamir and Adleman secured a patent enabling them to claim the invention of public key cryptography, copyright laws are simply a social construct, so we cannot ignore the often classified contributions of those working in government.

Cryptography

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Tag: RSA encryption

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