Ian Avrum Goldberg (born March 31, 1973) is a

cryptographer Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

and

cypherpunk A cypherpunk is any individual advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal g ...

. He is best known for breaking Netscape's implementation of SSL (with David Wagner), and for his role as chief scientist of Radialpoint (formerly

Zero Knowledge Systems Zero-Knowledge Systems (also known as ZKS) was a Canadian privacy technology software and services company, best known for the Freedom Network, its privacy network. It was founded by brothers Austin Hill & Hamnett Hill and their father Hamnett H ...

), a Canadian software company. Goldberg is currently a professor at the Faculty of Mathematics of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science within the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates ...

, and the Canada Research Chair in Privacy Enhancing Technologies. He was formerly

Tor Project Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

board of directors chairman, and is one of the designers of

off the record messaging Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) is a cryptographic protocol that provides encryption for instant messaging conversations. OTR uses a combination of Advanced Encryption Standard, AES symmetric-key algorithm with 128 bits key length, the Diffie–Hell ...

Education

He attended high school at the

University of Toronto Schools University of Toronto Schools (UTS) is an independent secondary day school affiliated with the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school follows a specialized academic curriculum, and admission is determined by competitive ex ...

, graduating in 1991. In 1995, he received a B.Math from the

in pure mathematics and computer science. He obtained a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in December 2000. His thesis was entitled ''A Pseudonymous Communications Infrastructure for the Internet''. His advisor was Eric Brewer.

Accomplishments

As a high school student, Goldberg was a member of Canada's team to the

International Math Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except ...

from 1989 to 1991, where he received a bronze, silver, and gold medal respectively. He was also a member of

team that won the

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest The ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest, known as the ICPC, is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world. Directed by ICPC Executive Director and Baylor Professor Dr. William B. ...

in 1994. In 1998, ''Wired'' Magazine chose him as a member of the "Wired 25". In 2011 he won the

EFF Pioneer Award The EFF Pioneer Award is an annual prize by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for people who have made significant contributions to the empowerment of individuals in using computers. Until 1998 it was presented at a ceremony in Washington, ...

. In 2019, he won the USENIX Security Test of Time Award along with his colleagues David Wagner and Randi Thomas and former PhD supervisor Eric Brewer.

Work in cryptography

In 1995, Goldberg with David Wagner discovered a flaw in the

random number generator Random number generation is a process by which, often by means of a random number generator (RNG), a sequence of numbers or symbols that cannot be reasonably predicted better than by random chance is generated. This means that the particular outc ...

used for temporary key generation in the SSL implementation of

Netscape Navigator Netscape Navigator was a web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in ...

. One of the first cryptanalyses on the WEP wireless encryption protocol was conducted by Goldberg with Nikita Borisov and David Wagner, revealing serious flaws in its design. Goldberg was a co-author of the Off-the-Record

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

encryption protocol. He is also the author of the

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

script included in the novel ''

Cryptonomicon ''Cryptonomicon'' is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II-era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code an ...

'' by Neal Stephenson. In 2009 Goldberg was co-author of the Sphinx Mix Format, which is nowadays implemented with the extension of a per-hop payload to increase the privacy of both payer and payee while routing Bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network.

Vitalik Buterin Vitaly "Vitalik" Buterin (born 1994) is a Russian-Canadian computer programmer and founder of Ethereum. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding ''Bitcoin Magazine'' in 2011. In 2014, Buterin deployed Eth ...

, co-founder of

Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH; sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capita ...

, was a research assistant of Goldberg while a student at the

. Goldberg is a member of the Cryptography, Security and Privacy group as well as the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI). He has been collaborating with the CPI works on the development of a new interdisciplinary research and education program.

Notes and references

:
Experience With Top Gun Wingman: A Proxy-Based Graphical Web Browser for the

3Com 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...

PalmPilot The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc (then a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics, later 3Com). These devices were launched on March 10, 1997. Accessories and pricing Pa ...

br>
:
Wingman: A web browser created for the Palm Pilot PDA
:
BARWAN research project, UC Berkeley (1995-1998)
:
ISAAC research group, UC Berkeley (1996-2005)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldberg, Ian 1973 births Living people Canadian computer scientists Modern cryptographers University of Waterloo alumni Cypherpunks University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Waterloo faculty International Mathematical Olympiad participants Competitive programmers

Education

Accomplishments

Work in cryptography

See also

Notes and references

External links