The Trio that set free Cryptography
If you ask a group of people what is the origin of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology? You will get many answers, and most of them will likely be bitcoin. No one in today’s mobile-first world truly understands the technological and philosophical problems we had to overcome to achieve digital freedom and personal privacy.
We do not know the pioneers of blockchain technology who not only innovated revolutionary methods to secure privacy but also fought against the government’s injustices. The Cypherpunk movement is what led to the creation of game-changing anonymous systems that served as a template for the ultimate cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
To celebrate the ones who came before us and changed the game of cryptography forever, we are going to share the story of Cypherpunks and technologies born out of the movement.
We shall explore each decade from the 70s to the 2000s and focus on key points that contributed to the Cypherpunk movement.
Part One (The 70s)- How three cryptographers defeated the government’s control on cryptography
The 70s is by far one of the most important decades in the history of cryptography. The trio that set free cryptography would be Martin Hellman, Whitfield Diffie, and Ralph Merkle. And they each come with a fascinating yet life-changing story.
Martin Hellman, a young nerd with big dreams
Hellman played a crucial role in fighting the NSA and publishing the first-ever widespread paper on cryptography. Growing up, Hellman was exposed to science, as his father was a physics teacher. His interest in math and science grew even more in seventh grade, but nothing was related to cryptography.
He followed his passion after completion of school and went to study at Stanford University. Hellman completed his master’s degree in electrical engineering and performed exceptionally well. Many would assume he started studying cryptography while doing his masters, but he never seems to have crossed paths with that side of computer science.
Fast forward to his life in IBM- Hellman met two researchers- Peter Elias and Horst Feistel, who shaped his mathematical understanding and philosophy towards cryptography. To continue his research, he went back to Stanford, but he joined as an Assistant professor this time.
He found cryptography so fascinating that by the end of 1971, he fully committed to pursuing only cryptographic research. No one at the university supported his ideas, and even he was not sure what he was trying to accomplish. At that time, the government and National Security Agency did not accept cryptographic research. They wanted to keep it a secret and never disclose it to the public.
Even after understanding all the consequences, Hellman did not stop and went ahead with his first technical report on cryptography. His work may not have the best reception, but it did not go unnoticed. This was when Whitfield Diffie contacted Hellman about his research.
Whitfield Diffie, the man who loved math but hated school
In the case of Diffie, the world of cryptography was introduced at a very early age, when his father gave him some cryptography books from a local library. He loved solving problems and studying pure mathematics but hated going to school.
Diffie barely made it out of graduation even though he was smart enough to perform well. His time at MIT was mainly dedicated to study core mathematics and not focus on programming, which he thought was “low-class work”.
After graduation, he worked part-time at MIT’s AI laboratory, which at that time was run by John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky. Diffie and John had a strong relationship, and little did Diffie know that McCarthy would later be regarded as the father of artificial intelligence.
After he left SAIL, he started his own research on privacy using cryptographic methods. To gain more insights, he visited many friends at universities and dug up all rare manuscripts related to cryptography. But he had no luck finding anything useful. In 1974, Diffie visited IMB and spoke to Feistel, who later referred to Hellman.
The two cryptographic researchers finally meet. Their discussions over dinners expanded to hours. Diffie later started working at a local research group while still spending more time with Hellman on Cryptography. This was in 1974.
In 1975, the government released the first-ever encryption cipher for commercial and public usage. Both cryptographers accepted the Data Encryption Standard (DES), which generated public interest in cryptography and privacy.
But when Lucifer ( cipher) underwent an unnecessary collaboration with the NSA, Hellman and Diffie understood how the shortened key length was insufficient. The NSA wanted to allocate less processing power to encrypt and decrypt, which later fired back in a big way.
Merkle, the accidental cryptographer
Ralph Merkle was a young 23-year-old computer science student from Berkeley. He did not have any fundamental knowledge about cryptography or public-key encryption, but he solved the unsolvable.
During his computer science course, he needed a personal project. That is when he stumbled across the riddle: how do you reestablish secure communications when a hostile enemy already knows everything?
He worked tirelessly to establish security when information exchanged between two parties is already known to the middleman. Merkle stayed up all night to finish his project, and suddenly, it hit him. He discovered there was another way to have security over an open communication line. His solution was a cryptographic key.
He knew he cracked the riddle and potentially solved one of the most important problems in the history of cryptography. When shared with the headteacher, he did not accept it as he could not understand it. Even his submission to the CACM was rejected. Apparently, the editor thought Merklle’s work’s content was not aligning with mainstream thinking of cryptography.
Merkle wanted to share his work with someone who could understand and give feedback, so he reached out to a computer scientist called Peter Blatman. Without a second thought, he referred Merkle to Diffie. Both of them went out for dinner and discussed how a 23-year old solved a problem that was going nowhere for years.
When Hellman and Diffie went over Merkle’s paper, they found out his method turned out to be inefficient. Both of them solved the distribution problem and published it in a paper that would later be known as: ‘New Directions in Cryptography’.
Even though Merkle’s concept didn’t make it into the paper, his public key distribution system has its own significance. The first line of the paper says, “ WE STAND TODAY on the brink of a revolution in cryptography”, which is 100% true.
The cryptocurrency protocols we see today use similar algorithms as a foundation to secure transactions on a blockchain. With Diffie-Hellman key exchange, we were able to create advanced systems that not only met user demand but did so without compromising security. By using a mutual secret, they figured it didn’t matter how many people were listening. A public channel can be established to encrypt and decrypt the data using symmetric cryptography.
After the publication of public-key cryptography, there was a growing distrust of the government’s cipher. Not only that, but the NSA also hid a similar algorithm from Great Britain’s intelligence agency (GCHQ). It was kept classified, and no one knew of its existence.
Now that you have come this far, you have an idea of how important the 70s were to cryptography and digital privacy. The three cryptographers impacted the world not only technology-wise but also removed barriers to cryptography.
Closing Statement
This trio of cryptographers achieved something no one ever imagined. They laid the foundation for other researchers like David Chaum in the 80s to ultimately create the first decentralized blockchain. Nothing we are witnessing right now would be possible without the dedication of Hellman, Diffie, and Merkel.
In our next part, we will discuss the origins of decentralization, untraceable payments, and anonymous systems like Tor. All of this played a huge role in the Cypherpunk movement. Stay tuned for part two!
