Before what we did, you could not have supported cryptography outside a fairly integrated organisation. If you look at the US Department of Defense, it’s very large, but very centralised; everybody knows the chain of command. They can have a trusted entity run by the National Security Agency (NSA) to manage the keys used by the military and government. If you were in the military, and it was part of your assignment to talk to somebody securely in another part of the military, they would supply you with a key, and every morning you come out and put one in your teletype machine or phone or whatever. But the internet … Continue reading Whitfield Diffie