The encryption pioneer who was written out of history

In the early 1970s, three men working for the British Government developed an encryption system that – almost 40 years later – underpins every transaction on the internet. There was only one problem: they couldn’t tell anyone about it.

Between them James Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson invented Public Key Cryptography, a system that permits secure communications and electronic transactions without the prior exchange of a secret key. Their work was used to secure Government communications – and naturally their bosses at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) wanted to keep their discovery top secret — via redwolf.newsvine.com