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In cryptography, Khufu and Khafre are two block ciphers designed by Ralph Merkle in 1989 while working at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. Along with Snefru, a cryptographic hash function, the ciphers were named after the Egyptian Pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Sneferu.
Under a voluntary scheme, Xerox submitted Khufu and Khafre to the US National Security Agency (NSA) prior to publication. NSA requested that Xerox not publish the algorithms, citing concerns about national security. Xerox, a large contractor to the US government, complied. However, a reviewer of the paper passed a copy to John Gilmore, who made it available via the sci.crypt newsgroup.[1][2] It would appear this was against Merkle's wishes.[3] The scheme was subsequently published at the 1990 CRYPTO conference (Merkle, 1990).
Khufu and Khafre were patented by Xerox; the patent was issued on March 26, 1991.[4]
- ^ John Gilmore (July 13, 1989). "Merkle's "A Software Encryption Function" now published and available". Newsgroup: sci.crypt. Usenet: [email protected].
- ^ Frank Cunningham (August 14, 1989). "the recent uproar". Newsgroup: sci.crypt. Usenet: [email protected]. [1]
- ^ "Merkle's "A Software Encryption Function" now published and available". groups.google.com.
- ^ U.S. patent 5,003,597