Ahto Buldas (born 17 January 1967) is an Estonian
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
.
He is the inventor of Keyless Signature Infrastructure, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Guardtime and Chair of the OpenKSI foundation.
Life and education
Buldas was born in
Tallinn
Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...
. After graduating from high school, he was conscripted in to the
Soviet Army
uk, Радянська армія
, image = File:Communist star with golden border and red rims.svg
, alt =
, caption = Emblem of the Soviet Army
, start_date ...
where he spent 2 years as an artillery officer in Siberia. After being discharged, he started studies in Tallinn University of Technology, where he defended his
MSc degree in 1993 and his
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in 1999. He currently lives in Tallinn with his wife and four children.
Career
Buldas was a leading contributor to the Estonian Digital Signature Act and
ID-card from 1996 to 2002, currently the only national-level
public-key infrastructure
A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to facilit ...
(PKI) which has achieved widespread adoption by a country's population for legally binding digital signatures. He published his first
timestamping related research in 1998 and has published over 30 academic papers on the subject. His experience of implementing a national level PKI led him to invent Keyless Signature Infrastructure, a digital signature/timestamping system for electronic data that uses only hash-function based cryptography. By using hash-functions as the only cryptographic primitive the complexities of key management are eliminated and the system remains secure from quantum cryptographic attacks. His invention led to the founding of keyless signature technology company Guardtime in 2006.
He is the Chair of Information Security at
Tallinn University of Technology
Established in 1918, Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech; et, Tallinna Tehnikaülikool) is the only technical university in Estonia. TalTech, in the capital city of Tallinn, is a university for engineering, business, public administratio ...
. Buldas has been a supervisor for 15 MSc dissertations and 4 PhD theses.
Awards
* 2002: Young Scientist Award by the Cultural Foundation of the President of Estonia.
* 2015:
Order of the White Star
The Order of the White Star ( et, Valgetähe teenetemärk; french: Ordre de l'Etoile Blanche) was instituted in 1936. The Order of the White Star is bestowed on Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic ...
, IV class.
References
Academic work
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Ahto Buldas' personal website Ahto Buldas' series of mini-lectures about cryptographic hash functions
Ahto Buldas' TTU lecture on keyless signatures
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buldas, Ahto
1967 births
Living people
Modern cryptographers
Estonian inventors
Estonian computer scientists
Estonian mathematicians
Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 4th Class
People from Tallinn
Tallinn University of Technology alumni
Academic staff of the University of Tartu
Academic staff of the Tallinn University of Technology