Rivest unlocks cryptography's past, looks toward future
The most widely used cryptographic system today may eventually be vulnerable, said computer science professor Ronald Rivest — one of the system's primary creators — but even if it fails, new systems are already waiting to be deployed.Rivest, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Computer Science, reviewed the history of code-making and code-breaking through the ages — the field known as cryptography — and made some predictions about the field’s future during MIT's prestigious Killian Faculty Achievement Award Lecture, held on Tuesday, Feb. 8. The cryptographic system currently used for the vast majority of all financial transactions and secure communications over the Internet was developed in 1977 by Rivest and two of his colleagues — professors Adi Shamir and Len Adleman of MIT’s mathematics department — and is known by their initials: RSA. The system depends on the fact that it is extremely difficult and time consuming to determine...