Professor Diffie delivers his first undergraduate lesson on Yuquan Campus

Pioneer of public-key cryptography and Turing Laureate Bailey Whitfield Diffie had his first lesson for undergraduates on Yuquan Campus today. Students from sophomore to senior coming from different campuses gathered for this first lecture.

The first lesson is an introduction to cyber security. Starting from the example of a phony caller asking for secret information, Prof. Diffie talked about the relationship between confidentiality and authenticity.

According to Prof. Diffie, random storage algorithm is able to increase the confidentiality by sealing the function of the network from the person using it. Here comes the digital signature where authenticity can be proven to someone else. While communications are increasingly essential, accessible and exploitable these days, there’s increasing need for security. Due to the amazingly great cost, the breakthrough still remains to take place.

In his last part, Prof. Diffie also illustrated the methods and equipments used in signals intelligence since World War I, such as Elephant cage, Molniya satellite, Capenhurst tower, Ivy bells pod and USS halibut.

A senior student from the department of Computer Studies says, “It is a great honor for us to have such an excellent scholar working and teaching at our university. I am very interested in information security and I think taking Prof. Diffie’s class will definitely help me with my understanding in this field.”

Professor Diffie shared the 2015 Turing Award with Martin Hellman for their profound contributions to modern cryptography. His course in cyber security has been open to graduate students since this October.

Writer: ZHOU Shiyun

Photo: LU Shaoqing