Martin Hellman is a Turing Award winner who helped to invent public-key cryptography against the NSA's wishes. I interviewed him all about his work and why it broke the law at the time.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/AZLOETBCQM4

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-nsa-public-key

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:34) Why his work broke the law

(08:39) How people did encryption before

(18:51) The crypto wars

(26:22) The story behind Diffie Hellman key exchange

(36:48) Signatures vs key exchange

(43:05) RSA patent wars

(48:08) Why inventions happen at similar times

(50:29) What he worked on after cryptography

(57:31) His thoughts on death

(59:40) Advice for his younger self

(01:00:45) Outro

Where to find Martin:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Hellman

• Website: https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

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• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Martin Hellman's “The Evolution of Public Key Cryptography”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tev3tVzH91s

• Keys Under Doormats: https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/keys-under-doormats/

• Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society (CRISIS report): https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/5131/cryptographys-role-in-securing-the-information-society

• Secure Communications Over Insecure Channels: https://doi.org/10.1145/359460.359473

• New Directions in Cryptography: https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1976.1055638