"Dr. Lowell K. ("Jim") Frazer founded modern cryptographic evaluation for the US government. As a result of his efforts, all cryptography used for classified applications by the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community is now subject to rigorous scientific evaluation. He influenced the design of most U.S. cryptographic systems fielded prior to 1990. In addition, Dr. Frazer was a prolific writer of technical papers.
He was selected as the first Communications Security (COMSEC) mathematician assigned as an integrated member at GCHQ from 1954 to 1956. During this two-year tour, he performed assessments of many cryptographic systems, designed speech cryptosystems, and discovered an analytic technique that would be widely used over the next three decades. Also, he authored a training primer for new COMSEC cryptomathematicians.
Dr. Frazer was the principal formulator of the standards that the United States and the United Kingdom use to judge the strength of cryptographic systems. He continued to lead the adaptation and extension of those standards as the role of cryptography grew from COMSEC to a more diverse mission.
Under his leadership, the industrial TEMPEST program, a novel approach to government-industry interaction, matured. The program integrated TEMPEST concerns into the security evaluation process for U.S. cryptographic equipment.
Dr. Frazer played a major role in developing NSA’s mathematics, cryptanalysis and Information Assurance (IA) communities. He assisted in developing the National Cryptologic School and was associated with the CryptoMath Institute from its inception. He was a member of the Mathematics, Cryptanalysis, and COMSEC Career Panels, and an Advisor to the NSA Technical Journal for approximately 20 years.
Dr. Frazer received numerous awards throughout his career including the Agency’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1969, the Exceptional Civilian Service Award in 1981, and the DCI’s National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal in 1985."[1]
In 2003 he was inducted in the NSA's Hall of Honor, an honor reserved for those who have made significant long-term contributions to cryptographic science.[2]
Following his retirement in 1985, Dr. Frazer started Information Security Systems Inc. to provide information assurance consulting services. For the next 20 years he was active in advancing the technology of information assurance for clients with unusually high levels of risk.
Dr. Lowell K. (Jim) Frazer died at age 88 on 18 December 2013. He was buried, with full military honors, at Arlington National Cemetery on 20 March 2014.
The Data Encryption Standard is a symmetric-key algorithm for the encryption of digital data. Although its short key length of 56 bits makes it too insecure for applications, it has been highly influential in the advancement of cryptography.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems. The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine. The existence of the NSA was not revealed until 1975.
Communications security is the discipline of preventing unauthorized interceptors from accessing telecommunications in an intelligible form, while still delivering content to the intended recipients.
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) ranks cryptographic products or algorithms by a certification called product types. Product types are defined in the National Information Assurance Glossary which defines Type 1, 2, 3, and 4 products.
William Frederick Friedman was a US Army cryptographer who ran the research division of the Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1930s, and parts of its follow-on services into the 1950s. In 1940, subordinates of his led by Frank Rowlett broke Japan's PURPLE cipher, thus disclosing Japanese diplomatic secrets before America's entrance into World War II.
Articles related to cryptography include:
Solomon Kullback was an American cryptanalyst and mathematician, who was one of the first three employees hired by William F. Friedman at the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1930s, along with Frank Rowlett and Abraham Sinkov. He went on to a long and distinguished career at SIS and its eventual successor, the National Security Agency (NSA). Kullback was the Chief Scientist at the NSA until his retirement in 1962, whereupon he took a position at the George Washington University.
Brigadier John Hessell Tiltman, was a British Army officer who worked in intelligence, often at or with the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) starting in the 1920s. His intelligence work was largely connected with cryptography, and he showed exceptional skill at cryptanalysis. His work in association with Bill Tutte on the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, the German teleprinter cipher, called "Tunny" at Bletchley Park, led to breakthroughs in attack methods on the code, without a computer. It was to exploit those methods, at extremely high speed with great reliability, that Colossus, the first digital programmable electronic computer, was designed and built.
The National Cryptologic Museum (NCM) is an American museum of cryptologic history that is affiliated with the National Security Agency (NSA). The first public museum in the U.S. Intelligence Community, NCM is located in the former Colony Seven Motel, just two blocks from the NSA headquarters at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. The motel was purchased, creating a buffer zone between the high security main buildings of the NSA and an adjacent highway. The museum opened to the public on December 16, 1993, and now hosts about 50,000 visitors annually from all over the world.
The Electronic Key Management System (EKMS) is a United States National Security Agency led program responsible for Communications Security (COMSEC) key management, accounting, and distribution. Specifically, EKMS generates and distributes electronic key material for all NSA encryption system whose keys are loaded using standard fill devices, and directs the distribution of NSA produced key material. Additionally, EKMS performs account registration, privilege management, ordering, distribution, and accounting to direct the management and distribution of physical COMSEC material for the services. The common EKMS components and standards facilitate interoperability and commonality among the armed services and civilian agencies.
The vast majority of the National Security Agency's work on encryption is classified, but from time to time NSA participates in standards processes or otherwise publishes information about its cryptographic algorithms. The NSA has categorized encryption items into four product types, and algorithms into two suites. The following is a brief and incomplete summary of public knowledge about NSA algorithms and protocols.
The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) is an American non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) – the Systems and Analyses Center (SAC), the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI), and the Center for Communications and Computing (C&C) – to assist the United States government in addressing national security issues, particularly those requiring scientific and technical expertise. It is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia.
Samuel Simon Snyder was a cryptographer for the United States Government. His pioneering work in early computers led directly to the development of the computer as we know it, and laid the foundation for many aspects of the modern computing industry. He is known for having broken every Japanese encrypted message with his partners in the Signal Intelligence Service during World War II and for having developed the MARC standards.
Howard C. Barlow (1918–2003) was an American cryptographer, telecommunications expert, and high-ranking civilian employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to cryptography:
Speck is a family of lightweight block ciphers publicly released by the National Security Agency (NSA) in June 2013. Speck has been optimized for performance in software implementations, while its sister algorithm, Simon, has been optimized for hardware implementations. Speck is an add–rotate–xor (ARX) cipher.
Simon is a family of lightweight block ciphers publicly released by the National Security Agency (NSA) in June 2013. Simon has been optimized for performance in hardware implementations, while its sister algorithm, Speck, has been optimized for software implementations.
Dorothy Toplitzky Blum was an American computer scientist and cryptanalyst. She worked for the National Security Agency and its predecessors from 1944 until her death in 1980.
Mahlon E. Doyle was an American cryptologist, inventor, innovator, and author. He enjoyed a three decade career at the National Security Agency and its predecessor organizations.
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