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Timeline 1970-2000 AD |
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1971 IBM's work on the Lucifer cipher and the work of the NSA lead to the U.S. Data Encryption Standard (=  DES)
1976 Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman publish their book New Directions in Cryptography, playing with the idea of public key cryptography
1977/78 the RSA algorithm is developed by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard M. Adleman and is published
1984 Congress passes Comprehensive Crime Control Act
- The Hacker Quarterly is founded
1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is passed in the USA
- Electronic Communications Privacy Act
1987 Chicago prosecutors found Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force
1988 U.S. Secret Service covertly videotapes a hacker convention
1989 NuPrometheus League distributes Apple Computer software
1990 - IDEA, using a 128-bit key, is supposed to replace DES
- Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard publish their work on Quantum Cryptography
- Martin Luther King Day Crash strikes AT&T long-distance network nationwide
1991 PGP (= Pretty Good Privacy) is released as freeware on the Internet, soon becoming worldwide state of the art; its creator is Phil Zimmermann
- one of the first conferences for Computers, Freedom and Privacy takes place in San Francisco
- AT&T phone crash; New York City and various airports get affected
1993 the U.S. government announces to introduce the Clipper Chip, an idea that provokes many political discussions during the following years
1994 Ron Rivest releases another algorithm, the RC5, on the Internet
- the blowfish encryption algorithm, a 64-bit block cipher with a key-length up to 448 bits, is designed by Bruce Schneier
1990s work on quantum computer and quantum cryptography
- work on biometrics for authentication (finger prints, the iris, smells, etc.)
1996 France liberates its cryptography law: one now can use cryptography if registered
- OECD issues Cryptography Policy Guidelines; a paper calling for encryption exports-standards and unrestricted access to encryption products
1997 April European Commission issues Electronic Commerce Initiative, in favor of strong encryption
1997 June PGP 5.0 Freeware widely available for non-commercial use
1997 June 56-bit DES code cracked by a network of 14,000 computers
1997 August U.S. judge assesses encryption export regulations as violation of the First Amendment
1998 February foundation of Americans for Computer Privacy, a broad coalition in opposition to the U.S. cryptography policy
1998 March PGP announces plans to sell encryption products outside the USA
1998 April NSA issues a report about the risks of key recovery systems
1998 July DES code cracked in 56 hours by researchers in Silicon Valley
1998 October Finnish government agrees to unrestricted export of strong encryption
1999 January RSA Data Security, establishes worldwide distribution of encryption product outside the USA
- National Institute of Standards and Technologies announces that 56-bit DES is not safe compared to Triple DES
- 56-bit DES code is cracked in 22 hours and 15 minutes
1999 May 27 United Kingdom speaks out against key recovery
1999 Sept: the USA announce to stop the restriction of cryptography-exports
2000 as the German government wants to elaborate a cryptography-law, different organizations start a campaign against that law
- computer hackers do no longer only visit websites and change little details there but cause breakdowns of entire systems, producing big economic losses
for further information about the history of cryptography see:
 http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/html/timeline.html
http://www.math.nmsu.edu/~crypto/Timeline.html
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~paul/cryptology/history.html
http://www.achiever.com/freehmpg/cryptology/hocryp.html
http://all.net/books/ip/Chap2-1.html
http://cryptome.org/ukpk-alt.htm
http://www.iwm.org.uk/online/enigma/eni-intro.htm
http://www.achiever.com/freehmpg/cryptology/cryptofr.html
http://www.cdt.org/crypto/milestones.shtml
for information about hacker's history see:
http://www.farcaster.com/sterling/chronology.htm:
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Memex Animation by Ian Adelman and Paul Kahn
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