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TYPE: [PAPER] Public Key Cryptography (PKC)
DESCRIPTION:  First published work on PKC was in a paper by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman titled "New Directions in Cryptography" in the November, 1976 edition of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, with references to Ralph Merkle's work from the University of California at Berkeley. The paper described the key concepts of PKC, including the creation of digital signatures. This work turned the world of cryptography research upside down, which had been somewhat restrained up to that point by real and perceived Government restrictions, and galvanized dozens of researchers around the world to work on practical implementations. Diffie, Hellman, and Merkle obtained patent number 4200770 on their method for secure key exchange.PARTICIPANTS: Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle
SUPPORTED STANDARDS: N/A

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