From: smb@research.att.com
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 93 08:40:38 PDT
To: "L. Detweiler" <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
Subject: Re: on the `R' in `RSA'
Message-ID: <9309241539.AA24457@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


	 I'd also be interested in hearing of any other accounts that match my
	 own passion for the subject :)  Also, if others have any educated
	 opinion, evidence, or theories of whether public key crypto was
	 *undiscovered* by the NSA prior to the publication of Diffie and
	 Hellman and RSA, I'd read them with great fascination.

NSA claims to have developed public-key cryptography about ten years before
the public discovery.  See

@article{Diffie88,
   author = {Whitfield Diffie},
   journal = {Proceedings of the IEEE},
   month = {May},
   number = {5},
   pages = {560--577},
   title = {The First Ten Years of Public Key Cryptography},
   volume = {76},
   year = {1988}
}

a paper I hightly recommend to this entire list.