Fergie's Tech Blog

Crypto Guru Whit Diffie Takes ICANN Security Job

Robert McMillan writes on PC World:

Six months after leaving his job at Sun Microsystems noted cryptographer Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie has landed a new gig, this time as a security adviser to the corporation that manages the Internet.

Diffie has taken a job as vice president for information security and cryptography at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a not-for-profit group that bears high-level responsibility for the domain name system and the Internet's IP addresses.

At ICANN, the cryptographer will supervise the "design, development and implementation of security methods for ICANN-managed networks" and advise the group on security matters, ICANN said in a statement released Friday.

Diffie is one of the inventors of the Diffie--Hellman key exchange, a cryptographic protocol that enabled public key cryptography and helped make strong cryptography mainstream. In his job at Sun, he worked as a high-level adviser to the company and often spoke publicly on security issues.

posted by Fergie @ 5/14/2010 01:55:00 PM