The story behind the creation of a secure internet.
We take it for granted nowadays, but the internet is one of the most impactful inventions of modern times – possibly even of all time. But how did it all start? The story of the internet is a fascinating journey through the minds of visionary thinkers and relentless innovators, many of them coming from mathematics and computer science. In this 12-part series, we dive into some of the stories and contributions of the trailblazers who laid the foundations for the interconnected world we live in today.
Previously, we looked at how the World Wide Web knitted the world together and how the structure of the internet was developed. But we have not touched on a core aspect of the internet: security. In this installment, we look at the work of two "veterans" of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum: Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman. Their work, along with those of their peers, developed a framework for a secure internet and paved the way for the field of cryptography to bloom.
Check out this week’s article by Andrei Mihai here: HLFF Blog
Image caption: From left to right: Ralph Merkle, Martin Hellman, and Whitfield Diffie in 1977. Image credits: Chuck Painter / Stanford News Service