C4IP is honoring Ronald Rivest (born 1947), Adi Shamir (b. 1952), and Leonard Adleman (b. 1945), whose invention of RSA cryptography forms the cornerstone of modern cybersecurity.
- Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman met as researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s, where they worked to create an unbreakable “key” that could be used to send and decode secure messages between computers.
- After over 40 tries, they finally succeeded in developing a brand-new, functional key system, which they named the “RSA” cryptosystem after their initials.
- They received a patent for their algorithm in 1983.
- The trio’s invention quickly became foundational to computer technology and the growing Internet. By the time their patent expired, RSA cryptography was used for approximately 90% of data encryption and was arguably “the most ubiquitous piece of code in the world.”
- Today, RSA cryptography remains widely used to protect digital communications such as emails, to ensure website security, and to secure almost all online financial transactions.
- The RSA system’s use in e-commerce has made it a pillar of our economy: In 2025, an estimated $24 trillion will be reached globally through digital payments.