
Diffie and Hellman Win Turing Award - matt_d
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/technology/cryptography-pioneers-to-win-turing-award.html
======
titzer
For a couple years I had an office across the hall from Diffie at Sun Labs and
spent many a Friday evening Sun Labs Bash chatting with him about various
topics of all kinds. Diffie is a kind and gracious man, well versed on a broad
range of topics, a lot of fun, and well, a better dresser than I. Congrats to
him and Martin Hellman!

~~~
silasdavis
History may have been different if you'd been comparable dressers...
Interesting to read things from contemporaries of famous computer scientists

~~~
bangbong
Ha ha not really sure you can describe Ben Titzer as a contemporary of
Whitfield Diffie. Not really the same age range.

~~~
PakG1
In a couple of hundred years, why not? :)

------
imglorp
Interesting story about Diffie testifying at the Newegg trial.

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/newegg-trial-
cryp...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/newegg-trial-crypto-
legend-diffie-takes-the-stand-to-knock-out-patent/)

~~~
mabbo
"We've heard a good bit in this courtroom about public key encryption," said
Albright. "Are you familiar with that?"

"Yes, I am," said Diffie, in what surely qualified as the biggest
understatement of the trial.

"And how is it that you're familiar with public key encryption?"

"I invented it."

~~~
ignoramous
Here's another interesting bit:

Then Fenster dropped this bombshell: "Dr. Diffie, you were not the first to
invent public key cryptography, were you?"

"I believe that I may have been," said Diffie, speaking cautiously. "But
perhaps you could be more specific?"

"In fact, a gentleman named James Ellis in England invented it before you,
right?"

Diffie sighed. He seemed, suddenly, almost tired. He had heard this one
before. "I spent a lot of time talking to James Ellis, and I can't figure it
out," he said. "James Ellis did very fine work."

~~~
brunoqc
I don't get it. Care to explain?

~~~
solidangle
Public-key encryption was supposedly invented at GCHQ by James Ellis, Clifford
Cocks and Malcolm Williamson in 1975, one year before Diffie and Hellman
published their paper. The work had to be kept secret though, so they never
published it.

~~~
drjesusphd
As far as I'm concerned, that's the price one pays for doing research in
secret.

~~~
progressive_dad
That's a pretty biting take on the matter. Who first taught you to hate your
country?

~~~
drjesusphd
"Hate my country?" What kind of nonsense is that?

------
Kinnard
I think it's clear that this is very uncoincidentally an extremely timely
award. The average person may have no idea, but we are in the middle of a
cryptowar[1].

[1] [http://reason.com/archives/2013/03/12/the-second-great-
crypt...](http://reason.com/archives/2013/03/12/the-second-great-crypto-war)

~~~
kchoudhu
Yeah. Individual achievement aside (and I'm not minimizing it in any way,
shape or form), I'm pretty sure this is the CS profession's way of telling the
FBI to get bent.

~~~
pklausler
As much as I like to believe your theory, I suspect that a big award like this
probably has a longer lead time than the recent Apple/FBI brouhaha.

~~~
bsharitt
The current Apple/FBI business is just the latest flare up in conflict that
started when Apple started encrypting phones by default.

~~~
reitanqild
The conflict started way before that.

My reference is to when encryption was considered munitions and a bunch of
people printed, shipped and scanned source code to get around the rules.

------
bachback
Both gave speeches about the history of their research:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTGqP0nxX08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTGqP0nxX08)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BJuuUxCaaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BJuuUxCaaY)

Merkle had a huge influence also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Merkle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Merkle)

~~~
rurban
Huge influence? It's his paper, his invention and this price without him is
again a huge fuckup. But he should be used to that in the meantime.

~~~
bachback
certainly don't disagree. An acquaintance of mine has trying to get him work
on Cryptocurrencies where Merkle trees are all around. he showed some interest
and was very open to new ideas. he has a nice website
[http://www.merkle.com/](http://www.merkle.com/)

[http://www.merkle.com/1974/RejectionLetter.pdf](http://www.merkle.com/1974/RejectionLetter.pdf)

"I had failed to provide any references to the prior work on public key
cryptography, and the reasons previous workers in the field had rejected it as
impossible. I should have looked up "public key cryptography" on Google before
submitting my paper. My defense is feeble: there was no Google, the term
"public key cryptography" did not yet exist, and there were no previous
workers in the field. There were no words for what I had done, and looking up
a concept to show that no one had previously thought of it is difficult. This
is not a unique problem: it illustrates a problem faced by anyone trying to
explain a new idea to an "expert" who expects a properly referenced article
anytime anyone tries to explain something to them. The more a new idea is
unrelated to any prior idea or concept the more it must appear as a squawling
bastard, naked and alone, appearing de novo and lacking any respectable
pedigree or family to vouch for its acceptability."

------
DenisM
Any advice on what paper of theirs to read in celebration of the event?
Something approachable.

When Lamport got his in 2013 I took the time to read "Time, Clocks, and the
Ordering of Events in a Distributed System" [1]. Been sleeping under the rock
since then.

[1]
[http://www.ics.uci.edu/~cs230/reading/time.pdf](http://www.ics.uci.edu/~cs230/reading/time.pdf)

~~~
fjarlq
Diffie and Hellman's 1976 paper, "New Directions in Cryptography"[1], cited by
their Turing Award, seems like a good start.

[1] [https://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf](https://www-
ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf)

------
dmbaggett
I attended the panel today when this was announced, and regarding the omission
of Ralph Merkle, both recipients explicitly acknowledged him by name. Diffie
specifically said that they built upon his prior work.

It also occurred to me that Moxie Marlinspike was in the unusual position of
being the _only_ one on the panel of five _not_ to have (yet!) received a
Turing Award. (He came off very well nonetheless.)

(In addition to Diffie and Hellman, the other two Turing-awarded panelists
were Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir.)

~~~
obvio171
I'm a big fan of Moxie's work, but would you mind elaborating on for which
work he'd receive a Turing award? I'm not familiar with their eligibility
standards. Thanks!

~~~
dmbaggett
It's like the Nobel Prize of computer science. It's generally given to
academics rather than practitioners, for deep theoretical contributions. But
not always.

In any case, I didn't mean to imply that Moxie should receive a Turing Award.
I just thought it was remarkable that 80% of the panel was Turing Award
winners -- but only _officially_ as of the beginning of the panel!

------
throwaway6497
I used to wrongly think you need a PhD to be able to win a Turing. Diffe
proved me wrong. He serves as an inspiration to anyone who mentally feels
inferior to PhDs when it comes to making significant contributions to the
field of Computer Science

~~~
dougws
You absolutely shouldn't feel "mentally inferior" to folks with PhDs. Doing
academic research, which probably involves getting a PhD, is almost certainly
the best way to make a significant contribution to Computer Science. These two
facts aren't really in conflict, I don't think.

~~~
arcanus
Not at all, and I'm skeptical any PhD (myself included) would ever say
otherwise.

------
fjarlq
Martin Hellman explains what he plans to do with his share of the Turing Award
money:

[https://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/the-turing-
awar...](https://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/the-turing-award-
nuclear-risk-and-recapturing-true-love/)

~~~
ekianjo
A noble cause. Reminding the world we have tens of thousands of nukes ready to
hit every major city at any time. I wish people were more conscious of that.

------
pklausler
Poor Ralph Merkle. Diffie and Hellman always seem to have gone out of their
way to acknowledge his contribution to public key encryption, but it looks
like the ACM overlooked it.

~~~
fjarlq
ACM did at least acknowledge Merkle in 1996, along with Adleman, Diffie,
Hellman, Rivest, and Shamir, in the inaugural Paris Kanellakis Award[1].

Merkle has an article on his website about the history of his public-key
cryptography work[2].

[1]
[http://awards.acm.org/award_winners/merkle_4605383.cfm](http://awards.acm.org/award_winners/merkle_4605383.cfm)

[2] [http://www.merkle.com/1974/](http://www.merkle.com/1974/)

------
nathan_long
I just found these free-to-watch episodes on crypto, featuring interviews with
Diffie and Hellman: [http://simonsingh.net/media/online-
videos/cryptography/the-s...](http://simonsingh.net/media/online-
videos/cryptography/the-science-of-secrecy-going-public/)

This is by Simon Singh, who wrote the excellent book "The Code Book: The
Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography", including a
chapter on Diffie–Hellman–Merkle key exchange.

~~~
DanBC
The very short interview with Clifford Cocks is good too.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwNv0b-2AcU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwNv0b-2AcU)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xEiOvXux4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xEiOvXux4)

"...I'm allowed to think about things outside work, but not allowed to put
anything down on paper"

------
haberman
It speaks to how exclusive an award this is that these guys hadn't won it
already. It's hard to think of achievements in computing that are as important
or influential as public-key cryptography.

------
drallison
The ACM announcement:
[http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/diffie_8371646.cfm](http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/diffie_8371646.cfm)

Marty and Whit deserve kudos for their important work in cryptography.

------
anaphor
Seems like a good place to link this awesome panel from Defcon 19 with
Whitfield Diffie and Moxie Marlinspike on SSL/PKI/etc
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt7uW6vDk00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt7uW6vDk00)

Some of the Q&A is pretty weird

------
akoster
Since the article doesn't quote Martin Hellman here's sons of his words on
cryptography (from an interview after receiving a different award):
[http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/march/inventor-prize-
hell...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/march/inventor-prize-
hellman-030411.html)

------
redthrowaway
Is it usual practice for a Turing Award to be awarded so long after the work
in question?

~~~
JoshTriplett
Yes. See past recipients at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award)
. Almost all of them are for fundamental work that everyone builds on, and
seeing that relies on the benefit of years or decades of hindsight.

~~~
redthrowaway
It seems the trend has been towards later and later recognition, which makes
sense given the age of the field and the award.

\- Knuth got his for TAOCP in 1976, 8 years after first publication.

\- Thompson and Ritchie got theirs for UNIX in 1983, 10 or so years after its
introduction.

\- Englebart got his for his HCI work in 1997, 30 or so years after the
fundamental work was done (but just after its universal adoption)

\- Alan Kay got his for OOP & Smalltalk in 2003, 20+ years after the first
stable release.

\- Cert & Kahn got theirs for TCP/IP in 2005, 20+ years on.

And so forth.

------
lukeh
This was on the BBC last night:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03l61pn](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03l61pn)

------
lkowalcz
Surprising it took this long. (Especially since, for example, RS and A have
had Turing awards for more than a decade)

------
wbsun
tl;dr version of the 2016 ACM Turing Award:

((g^a) mod p)^b mod p = (g^ab) mod p = ((g^b) mod p)^a mod p

\-- The beauty of math.

~~~
AstralStorm
This skips the most important part of the proof which explains why this is not
easily invertible without the secret key.

~~~
lkowalcz
What is this part? Isn't it just by assumption? (also, by secret key, I'm
guessing you mean 'a', 'b')

------
maaku
Why was Merkle not included?

------
64bitbrain
yayy!! This is just great! Congrats to Martin and Hellman.

Why it takes such long time for Computer Scientist to achieve such Award. DH
Algo has been well known for long time. On the other hand
Physicists(Theoretical, Astro, ...) dont have to wait too long to gain such
recognition.

~~~
Godel_unicode
Martin (sic) Hellman is one person. His co-awardee is Whitfield Diffie.

------
signa11
just curious, is anyone wondering why ralph-merkle is not here as well ?

------
bkinman
Finally, took long enough.

