Clifford Cocks

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Clifford Christopher Cocks , CB , (born December 28, 1950 ) is a British mathematician and cryptographer at GCHQ . He discovered the widely used encryption algorithm, now known as RSA , about three years before it was independently developed at MIT by Ronald Rivest , Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman . This achievement is not generally recognized him because his work is by definition a level of secrecy was subject at the time and was therefore not be published.

Life

In 1968, Cocks won silver at the International Mathematical Olympiad while at Manchester Grammar School . He then studied mathematics at King's College , Cambridge and continued his studies at Oxford University, where he specialized in number theory . In September 1973 he left the university and joined the CESG, a branch of the GCHQ.

At GCHQ, Cocks learned about the concept of " non-secret encryption " developed by James H. Ellis in the late 1960s . In 1973, Cocks developed the first implementation of this concept, a procedure that later became known as RSA encryption. The GCHQ had no use for the procedure, but classified it as secret. It only became known after its independent later discovery and publication by Ronald L. Rivest , Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman in 1977. Cocks' previous authorship was not revealed until 1997.

In 2001 Cocks developed one of the first secure ID-based encryption methods (IBE), based on assumptions about square residues in groups of composite order. The method is not widely used in practice due to its long ciphers in relation to the message. It is currently one of the few IBE methods that does not use bilinear maps and relies on several well-studied mathematical problems for safety reasons.

In 2003, Clifford Cocks became Chief Mathematician of the GCHQ. In 2008 he was made Companion of the Order of the Bath (the source describes him as a Counselor, Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and received an honorary degree from the University of Bristol . In 2015 he was elected to the Royal Society .

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 58557, HMSO, London, December 28, 2007, p. 2 ( PDF , accessed March 7, 2008, English).
  2. ↑ Clifford Cocks Oration . Bristol University . Archived from the original on November 15, 2009. Retrieved November 4, 2008.
  3. ↑ Honorary degrees awarded . Bristol University . Retrieved March 7, 2008.

Fonts

  • Clifford Cocks, An Identity Based Encryption Scheme Based on Quadratic Residues., Cryptography and Coding, 8th IMA International Conference, 2001, pp. 360-363.
  • Clifford Cocks, Mathematics and Cryptography in Timothy Gowers , June Barrow-Green , Imre Leader (Editor): The Princeton Companion to Mathematics , Princeton University Press 2008

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cocks, Clifford
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cocks, Clifford Christopher
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1950