Whitfield Diffie - is a US cryptogrher

Whitfield Diffie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie (born June 5, 1944) is a i and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography.

He received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965.

Diffie and Martin Hellman's paper New Directions in Cryptography was published in 1976. It introduced a radically new method of distributing cryptographic keys, that went far toward solving one of the fundamental problems of cryptography, key distribution. It has become known as Diffie–Hellman key exchange. The article also seems to have stimulated the almost immediate public development of a new class of encryption algorithms, the asymmetric key algorithms.^[1]

Diffie was Manager of Secure Systems Research for Northern Telecom, where he designed the key management architecture for the PDSO security system for X.25 networks. ^[2]

In 1991 he joined Sun Microsystems Laboratories (in Menlo Park, California) as a Distinguished Engineer, working primarily on public policy aspects of cryptography. Diffie remained with Sun, serving as its Chief Security Officer and as a Vice President until November 2009. He is also a Sun Fellow.^[3]

In 1992 he was awarded a Doctorate in Technical Sciences (Honoris Causa) by the ETH Zurich. He is also a fellow of the Marconi Foundation and visiting fellow of the Isaac Newton Institute. He has received various awards from other organisations. In July 2008, he was also awarded a Degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by Royal Holloway, University of London.^[4] He was also awarded the IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award in 1981 (together with Martin E. Hellman),^[5] the Louis E. Levy Medal in 1997^[6] and the IEEERichard W. Hamming Medal in 2010.^[7]

Diffie and Susan Landau's book Privacy on the Line was published in 1998 on the politics of wiretapping and encryption. An updated and expanded edition appeared in 2007.

As of 2008, Diffie was a visiting professor at the Information Security Group based at Royal Holloway, University of London.^[8]

In May 2010, Diffie joined the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as Vice President for Information Security and Cryptography.^[