Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 8
Electronic Mail and
Internet Security
The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a
global village.
Marshall McLuhan ( 1911 - 1980 ) , Canadian communications scholar.
— from The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)
8.1 Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
Phil Zimmermann (Figure 8.1) was born in 1954 and raised in Florida. His
interest in codes began at an early age. For instance, in the fourth grade, he
was decipheringsome minor codes broadcast on children's television shows. He
began reading about codes, and steganography, even creating his own invisible
ink out of lemon juice, as well as some of his own original ciphers. This interest
continued through his youth, so that by the time he entered Florida Atlantic
University in 1972, he turned to computers as a tool for the cryptographic skills
that he, independently, had honed over the years.
By the time he was ready to graduate in 1977, he came across Martin Gar-
diner's article in Scientific American [100] (see page 175), about RSA. This
merely increased his interest in learningmore about cryptoraphy. He even
considered implementingRSA on a computer. However, he felt that he had
neither the computingmachinery available to him, nor the mathematical back-
ground to make it work, so he abandoned the idea. This would eventually
change.
By 1980, he was already married and raisinga family. He moved to New
Zealand, largely for political reasons involving his disenchantment with Amer-
ican politics, especially as it pertained to privacy issues at the time. Yet, he
found little there (in the sense of a lack of any computer business infrastructure),
so after a couple of years he returned home.
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