Seminar by Phil Zimmerman: Designing for pervasive surveillance environments

Date:
20 May 2016
Time:
13:30h - 14:30h
Location:
Lecture hall Boole - Faculty of EEMCS
Organised by:
TU Delft

The seminar will discuss both the public policy side of crypto, as well as technical aspects of protocol design. A recent resurgence in the crypto wars of the 1990s requires a response in policy space as well as protocols designed to resist pervasive surveillance. Phil will discuss his work on designing protocols for end-to-end secure VoIP, without depending on a PKI, without depending on a trusted server, while remaining resistant to a MiTM attack. The protocol includes special features for quantum computing resistance. It can be also be used to provide authentication for end-to-end secure messaging protocols.

Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy, an email encryption software package. Originally designed as a human rights tool, PGP was published for free on the Internet in 1991. This made Zimmermann the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread worldwide. PGP nonetheless became the most widely used email encryption software in the world. Phil is based in Geneva, where he heads the company Silent Circle – the secure communications company he co-founded in 2012. Phil Zimmermann’s pioneering work in cryptography has won him numerous technical and humanitarian accolades. In 2008, for example, PC World named him one of the “top 50 tech visionaries” of the last 50 years. Phil Zimmermann recently received an honorary doctorate of Free University of Brussels.