David Chaum | |
---|---|
Born | 1955 (age 68–69) |
Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
Occupations | |
Known for | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Computer science |
Thesis | Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups (1982) |
Doctoral advisor | Bernard Marcel Mont-Reynaud |
Website | www |
David Lee Chaum (born 1955) is an American computer scientist, cryptographer, and inventor. He is known as a pioneer in cryptography and privacy-preserving technologies, and widely recognized as the inventor of digital cash. His 1982 dissertation "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups" is the first known proposal for a blockchain protocol. [1] Complete with the code to implement the protocol, Chaum's dissertation proposed all but one element of the blockchain later detailed in the Bitcoin whitepaper. He has been referred to as "the father of online anonymity", [2] and "the godfather of cryptocurrency". [3]
He is also known for developing ecash, an electronic cash application that aims to preserve a user's anonymity, and inventing many cryptographic protocols like the blind signature, mix networks and the Dining cryptographers protocol. In 1995 his company DigiCash created the first digital currency with eCash. [4] : 65–70 His 1981 paper, "Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms", laid the groundwork for the field of anonymous communications research. [5]
More recently in 2020, Chaum founded xx network, a privacy-focused blockchain platform, and in 2021 launched xx coin (abbreviation XX), a cryptocurrency designed to enhance user privacy and provide quantum resistance. [6] [7]
Chaum was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California. [8] He gained a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1982. [9] [10] Also that year, he founded the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), which currently organizes academic conferences in cryptography research. [11] : 47 Subsequently, he taught at the New York University Graduate School of Business Administration and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He also formed a cryptography research group at CWI, the Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam. [12] He founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in 1990. [4] : 119
Chaum received the Information Technology European Award for 1995. [13] In 2004, he was named an IACR Fellow. [14] In 2010, at the RSA Conference, he was honored with the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics. [15] In 2019, he was awarded the honorary title of Dijkstra Fellow by CWI. [16] He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lugano in 2021. [17]
Chaum resides in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. [18]
Recently credited by Alan Sherman's "On the Origins and Variations of Blockchain Technologies", [1] Chaum's 1982 Berkeley dissertation proposed every element of the blockchain found in Bitcoin except proof of work. The proposed vault system lays out a plan for achieving consensus state between nodes, chaining the history of consensus in blocks, and immutably time-stamping the chained data. The paper also lays out the specific code to implement such a protocol.
Chaum is credited as the inventor of secure digital cash for his 1983 paper, which also introduced the cryptographic primitive of a blind signature. [19] These ideas have been described as the technical roots of the vision of the Cypherpunk movement that began in the late 1980s. [20] Chaum's proposal allowed users to obtain digital currency from a bank and spend it in a manner that is untraceable by the bank or any other party. [21] In 1988, he extended this idea (with Amos Fiat and Moni Naor) to allow offline transactions that enable detection of double-spending. [22]
In 1990, he founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in Amsterdam to commercialize the ideas in his research. [4] : 119 The first electronic payment was sent in 1994. [23] In 1998, DigiCash filed for bankruptcy, and in 1999 Chaum sold off DigiCash and ended his involvement with the company. [12] [24]
In the same 1982 paper that proposed digital cash, Chaum introduced blind signatures. [19] This form of digital signature blinds the content of a message before it is signed, so that the signer cannot determine the content. The resulting blind signature can be publicly verified against the original, unblinded message in the manner of a regular digital signature. [25]
In 1989, he (with Hans van Antwerpen) introduced undeniable signatures. [26] This form of digital signature uses a verification process that is interactive, so that the signatory can limit who can verify the signature. Since signers may refuse to participate in the verification process, signatures are considered valid unless a signer specifically uses a disavowal protocol to prove that a given signature was not authentic. [27]
In 1991, he (with Eugene van Heyst) introduced group signatures, which allow a member of a group to anonymously sign a message on behalf of the entire group. [28] However an appointed group manager holds the power to revoke the anonymity of any signer in the case of disputes. [29]
In 1981, Chaum proposed the idea of an anonymous communication network in a paper. [30] His proposal, called mix networks, allows a group of senders to submit an encryption of a message and its recipient to a server. Once the server has a batch of messages, it will reorder and obfuscate the messages so that only this server knows which message came from which sender. The batch is then forwarded to another server who does the same process. Eventually, the messages reach the final server where they are fully decrypted and delivered to the recipient. A mechanism to allow return messages is also proposed. Mix networks are the basis of some remailers and are the conceptual ancestor to modern anonymous web browsing tools like Tor (based on onion routing). Chaum has advocated that every router be made, effectively, a Tor node. [31]
In 1988, Chaum introduced a different type of anonymous communication system called a DC-Net, which is a solution to his proposed Dining Cryptographers Problem. [32] DC-Nets is the basis of the software tool Dissent. [33]
In 2017, Chaum published a description of a new variety of mix network. [34] A real-world implementation of this network, called cMix and running on the xx network, later became the data transmission layer for the instant messaging platform xx messenger. [35]
Chaum has made numerous contributions to secure voting systems, including the first proposal of a system that is end-to-end verifiable. This proposal, made in 1981, [30] was given as an application of mix networks. In this system, the individual ballots of voters were kept private which anyone could verify that the tally was counted correctly. This, and other early cryptographic voting systems, assumed that voters could reliably compute values with their personal computers. In 1991,[ citation needed ] Chaum introduced SureVote which allowed voters to cast a ballot from an untrustworthy voting system, [36] proposing a process now called "code voting" and used in remote voting systems like Remotegrity and DEMOS. [37] [38]
In 1994, Chaum introduced the first in-person voting system in which voters cast ballots electronically at a polling station and cryptographically verify that the DRE did not modify their vote (or even learn what it was). [39] In the following years, Chaum proposed (often with others) a series a cryptographically verifiable voting systems that use conventional paper ballots: Prêt à Voter, [40] Punchscan, [41] and Scantegrity. [42] The city of Takoma Park, Maryland used Scantegrity for its November, 2009 election. [43] This was the first time a public sector election was run using any cryptographically verifiable voting system. [44]
In 2011, Chaum proposed Random Sample Elections. [45] This electoral system allows a verifiably random selection of voters, who can maintain their anonymity, to cast votes on behalf the entire electorate. [46]
In a 1979 report published as Memorandum No. UCB/ERL M79/10 [47] by the Electronics Research Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, Chaum proposed a mechanism for splitting a cryptographic key into partial keys that could be distributed among mutually suspicious groups. This concept was a significant predecessor to what is now known as secret sharing. [48]
In 1985, Chaum proposed the original anonymous credential system, [21] which is sometimes also referred to as a pseudonym system. [49] This stems from the fact that the credentials of such a system are obtained from and shown to organizations using different pseudonyms which cannot be linked.
In 1988, Chaum with Gilles Brassard and Claude Crépeau published a paper [50] that introduced zero-knowledge arguments, as well as a security model using information-theoretic private-channels, and also first formalized the concept of a commitment scheme.
1991, with Torben Pedersen, he demonstrated a well-cited zero-knowledge proof of a DDH tuple. [51] This proof is particularly useful as it can prove proper reencryption of an ElGamal ciphertext.
Chaum contributed to an important commitment scheme which is often attributed to Pedersen. In fact, Pedersen, in his 1991 paper, [52] cites a rump session talk on an unpublished paper by Jurjen Bos and Chaum for the scheme. It appeared even earlier in a paper by Chaum, Damgard, and Jeroen van de Graaf. [53]
In 1993 with Stefan Brands, Chaum introduced the concept of a distance-bounding protocol. [54]
In 2019, he was one of the speakers at the fifth Ethereum developer conference, which was held in Japan. [55]
In July 2024, Chaum sat down with Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum for a panel on the future of privacy at Plasmacon conference at the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan. [56]
Articles related to cryptography include:
Ecash was conceived by David Chaum as an anonymous cryptographic electronic money or electronic cash system in 1982. It was realized through his corporation Digicash and used as micropayment system at one US bank from 1995 to 1998.
In cryptography a blind signature, as introduced by David Chaum, is a form of digital signature in which the content of a message is disguised (blinded) before it is signed. The resulting blind signature can be publicly verified against the original, unblinded message in the manner of a regular digital signature. Blind signatures are typically employed in privacy-related protocols where the signer and message author are different parties. Examples include cryptographic election systems and digital cash schemes.
Provable security refers to any type or level of computer security that can be proved. It is used in different ways by different fields.
Kleptography is the study of stealing information securely and subliminally. The term was introduced by Adam Young and Moti Yung in the Proceedings of Advances in Cryptology – Crypto '96. Kleptography is a subfield of cryptovirology and is a natural extension of the theory of subliminal channels that was pioneered by Gus Simmons while at Sandia National Laboratory. A kleptographic backdoor is synonymously referred to as an asymmetric backdoor. Kleptography encompasses secure and covert communications through cryptosystems and cryptographic protocols. This is reminiscent of, but not the same as steganography that studies covert communications through graphics, video, digital audio data, and so forth.
A group signature scheme is a method for allowing a member of a group to anonymously sign a message on behalf of the group. The concept was first introduced by David Chaum and Eugene van Heyst in 1991. For example, a group signature scheme could be used by an employee of a large company where it is sufficient for a verifier to know a message was signed by an employee, but not which particular employee signed it. Another application is for keycard access to restricted areas where it is inappropriate to track individual employee's movements, but necessary to secure areas to only employees in the group.
In cryptography, a ring signature is a type of digital signature that can be performed by any member of a set of users that each have keys. Therefore, a message signed with a ring signature is endorsed by someone in a particular set of people. One of the security properties of a ring signature is that it should be computationally infeasible to determine which of the set's members' keys was used to produce the signature. Ring signatures are similar to group signatures but differ in two key ways: first, there is no way to revoke the anonymity of an individual signature; and second, any set of users can be used as a signing set without additional setup.
Digital credentials are the digital equivalent of paper-based credentials. Just as a paper-based credential could be a passport, a driver's license, a membership certificate or some kind of ticket to obtain some service, such as a cinema ticket or a public transport ticket, a digital credential is a proof of qualification, competence, or clearance that is attached to a person. Also, digital credentials prove something about their owner. Both types of credentials may contain personal information such as the person's name, birthplace, birthdate, and/or biometric information such as a picture or a finger print.
DigiCash Inc. was an electronic money corporation founded by David Chaum in 1989. DigiCash transactions were unique in that they were anonymous due to a number of cryptographic protocols developed by its founder. DigiCash declared bankruptcy in 1998 and subsequently sold its assets to eCash Technologies, another digital currency company, which was acquired by InfoSpace on February 19, 2002.
Moni Naor is an Israeli computer scientist, currently a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Naor received his Ph.D. in 1989 at the University of California, Berkeley. His advisor was Manuel Blum.
Adam Back is a British cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is the CEO of Blockstream, which he co-founded in 2014. He invented Hashcash, which is used in the bitcoin mining process.
Non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs are cryptographic primitives, where information between a prover and a verifier can be authenticated by the prover, without revealing any of the specific information beyond the validity of the statement itself. This makes direct communication between the prover and verifier unnecessary, effectively removing any intermediaries.
In cryptography, subliminal channels are covert channels that can be used to communicate secretly in normal looking communication over an insecure channel. Subliminal channels in digital signature crypto systems were found in 1984 by Gustavus Simmons.
Amos Fiat is an Israeli computer scientist, a professor of computer science at Tel Aviv University. He is known for his work in cryptography, online algorithms, and algorithmic game theory.
In cryptography, server-based signatures are digital signatures in which a publicly available server participates in the signature creation process. This is in contrast to conventional digital signatures that are based on public-key cryptography and public-key infrastructure. With that, they assume that signers use their personal trusted computing bases for generating signatures without any communication with servers.
In cryptography, an accumulator is a one way membership hash function. It allows users to certify that potential candidates are a member of a certain set without revealing the individual members of the set. This concept was formally introduced by Josh Benaloh and Michael de Mare in 1993.
A cryptocurrency wallet is a device, physical medium, program or an online service which stores the public and/or private keys for cryptocurrency transactions. In addition to this basic function of storing the keys, a cryptocurrency wallet more often offers the functionality of encrypting and/or signing information. Signing can for example result in executing a smart contract, a cryptocurrency transaction, identification, or legally signing a 'document'.
Direct Recording Electronic with Integrity and Enforced Privacy (DRE-ip) is an End-to-End (E2E) verifiable e-voting system without involving any tallying authorities, proposed by Siamak Shahandashti and Feng Hao in 2016. It improves a previous DRE-i system by using a real-time computation strategy and providing enhanced privacy. A touch-screen based prototype of the system was trialed in the Gateshead Civic Centre polling station on 2 May 2019 during the 2019 United Kingdom local elections with positive voter feedback. A proposal that includes DRE-ip as a solution for large-scale elections was ranked 3rd place in the 2016 Economist Cybersecurity Challenge jointly organized by The Economist and Kaspersky Lab.
Aggelos Kiayias is a Greek cryptographer and computer scientist, currently a professor at the University of Edinburgh and the Chief Science Officer at Input Output Global, the company behind Cardano.
An oblivious pseudorandom function (OPRF) is a cryptographic function, similar to a keyed-hash function, but with the distinction that in an OPRF two parties cooperate to securely compute a pseudorandom function (PRF).
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