ASecuritySite Podcast

In this episode Professor William Buchanan OBE takes us back through the patents that gave rise to the security for the internet as we know it.

In this podcast, we will outline some of the design choices that Satoshi Nakamoto made for the hashing of the private key to the public ID, especially on the selection of the two hashing methods of SHA-256 and RIPEMD160.

So how do we create a world where we can store our secrets in a trusted and then reveal them when required? Let's say I predict the outcome of an election, but I don't want to reveal my prediction until after the election. Well, I could store a commitment to my prediction, and then at some time in the future, I could reveal it to you, and you can check against the commitment I have made. Anyone who views my commitment should not be able to see what my prediction is. This is known as Pedersen Commitment, and where we produce our commitment and then show the message that matches the commitment. In its core form, we can implement a Pedersen Commitment in discrete logs [here]. But blockchain, IoT, Tor, and many other application areas, now use elliptic curve methods, so let's see if we can make a commitment with them.

Note: TeamViewer is not a malicious piece of software when normally used. The scammer wanted to install a remote desktop on my machine with it.

Jean-Philippe (JP) Aumasson is a true innovator in cryptography, and especially in the creation of fast, secure and light-weight hashing methods. He co-designed the BLAKE hashing method [here], and which is currently the fastest secure cryptographic hashing function. Along with this, he worked with Daniel J Bernstein on SipHash [here], and created the Cryptography Coding Standard. JP also created the Quark light-weight hashing method, and is also the author of "Serious Cryptography: A Practical Introduction to Modern Encryption" [here].

Neal I. Koblitz is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington. He is a co-inventor of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). His original paper was published in 1987 and entitled "Elliptic curve cryptosystems" [1]. Overall, ECC is one of the greatest breakthroughs in cryptography and which has largely replaced discrete logarithm methods in key exchange and has replaced the RSA method in many applications for digital signing. Overall, elliptic curve methods are now used extensively with digital signing (ECDSA/EdDSA) and for key exchange (ECDH), along with applications into Bitcoin and Ethereum. Neal was recently recognized for his work with the Levchin Prize at the real-world cryptography conference. His recent work has included applications for lattice cryptography and random oracles. Neal is also the author of several leading textbooks: [1] Koblitz, N. (1994). A course in number theory and cryptography (Vol. 114). Springer Science & Business Media.

In this episode Professor William Buchanan OBE talks with Professor Keith Martin, from the Royal Holloway, about the intersection of information security and academia, privacy and digital footprints.

In research, we build on the shoulders of giants, and Taher Elgamal is one the giants of cybersecurity. His work on Netscape led to the creation of SSL, and for which much of our Web security is still built on. His paper on "A public key cryptosystem and a signature scheme based on discrete logarithms" is true classic, and has been referenced over 11,600 times. Within the paper, Tahir outlined an encryption method and a digital signature method. His 'base' was to take John Napier's logarithm, and make them discrete. The signature method was adopted as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS) by NIST, and which has to become ECDSA, as used by Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Elgamal methods is now being used in many new areas of privacy, including within homomorphic encryption methods. Tahir studied electrical engineering in the late 1970s at Stanford University. It was there he met Marty Hellman and who helped him spark an interesting in cryptography. He received his PhD in 1984 and it was Marty who introduced him to Paul Kocker at Netscape Communications. Together, Paul and Tahir worked on a method to implement end-to-end encryption, and published SSL 3.0 in November 1996. Join this "fireside chat", as Taher recalls his past, and also looks to the future.

In this episode Professor William Buchanan OBE talks with by Dan Shumow, Senior Software Development Engineer in the Security and Cryptography group, about cryptography, RSA and the researcher's mindset.

Len is a co-creator of the RSA encryption algorithm [1] and received the 2002 Turing Award (often defined as the Nobel Prize of Computer Science). The RSA paper is one of the most significant computer science papers ever published and has received over 25,695 citations. Len is also known for the creation of DNA computing. He is a professor at the University of Southern California and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. [1] Rivest, R. L., Shamir, A., & Adleman, L. (1978). A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems. Communications of the ACM, 21(2), 120-126.

In this episode Professor William Buchanan OBE talks with Professor Martin Hellman, a world-renowned cryptologist and a founder of public key encryption, about cryptography and ethics.

In this episode Professor William Buchanan OBE talks with Professor Leonard Adleman, from the University of Southern California, about the endurance of RSA, DNA as a computational substrate and the contention between national security and privacy.

In this episode Professor William Buchanan OBE talks with Professor Alan Woodward from University of Surrey about his illustrious career as a Physicist, Consultant, Researcher and Professor.

In this episode Professor William Buchanan OBE is joined by Nick Sullivan, head of research at Cloudflare, to discuss the mathematics of cryptography, public key encryption, and the implications of quantum computing.

In this Episode Professor William Buchanan OBE talks with Federico Charosky about the past, present and future of the information security industry, what it takes to innovate as an entrepreneur and his view on the intersection between industry and academia.