January 18, 2019

Colloquium Topic: The Role NSA played in the Development of DES

When the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) was tasked with developing a commercial encryption standard, they asked for help from NSA.  This talk will discuss the development of the Data Encryption Standard (DES), and the politics that played a major role in the process.   The IBM algorithm and the changes NSA made to that algorithm will be discussed, as will the rationale behind those changes.  The talk will highlight academic response to DES and the open analytic work culminating in the Shamir and Biham attack on DES.

---

Colloquium Speaker: Richard M. (Dickie) George

Richard M. (Dickie) George is the Senior Advisor for Cyber Security at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.  At the Lab, he works on a number of projects sponsored by the US Government and provides oversight on additional efforts.  He works with senior management at the Lab on cyber strategy for protection of critical national systems.  Prior to joining APL, he worked at the National Security Agency as a mathematician from 1970 until his retirement in 2011. While at NSA, he wrote more than 125 technical papers on cryptomathematical subjects, and served in a number of positions: analyst, and technical director at the division, office, group, and directorate level. He served as the Technical Director of the Information Assurance Directorate for eight years until his retirement.