Diffie and Hellman: public-key cryptography and key exchange

What changed

Developed the public-key and digital-signature framework and described a shared-key exchange using modular exponentiation in a finite field.

Scientific scope

The 1976 public-key direction and specified key-exchange construction.

Evidence

Original sources and institutional historical accounts support the stated contribution. The reading boundary is recorded at each source; this assessment is not an independent scientific verification.

Contributors

• Whitfield Diffie · SCIENCE: Named source contributor to this scoped work; individual labor shares are not measured.
• Martin E. Hellman · SCIENCE: Named source contributor to this scoped work; individual labor shares are not measured.

• Diffie and Hellman, New Directions in Cryptography, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 22, 644–654 (1976)

Provisional WRS assessment, edition 2026-10-16.1. Independent expert calibration is pending. This grade does not certify correctness or assign ownership.

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