Matthew D. Green
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Matthew Daniel Green (born 1976) is an American cryptographer and security technologist. Green is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the
Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795 – December 24, 1873) was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he remained for most ...
Information Security Institute. He specializes in applied cryptography, privacy-enhanced information storage systems, anonymous
cryptocurrencies A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank A bank is a financial i ...
, elliptic curve crypto-systems, and satellite television piracy. He is a member of the teams that developed the
Zerocoin Zerocoin is a privacy protocol proposed in 2013 by Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew D. Green and his graduate students, Ian Miers and Christina Garman. It was designed as an extension to the Bitcoin protocol that would improve Bitcoi ...
anonymous
cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...
and Zerocash. He has also been influential in the development of the Zcash system. He has been involved in the groups that exposed vulnerabilities in RSA BSAFE,
Speedpass Speedpass was a keychain radio-frequency identification (RFID) device introduced in 1997 by Mobil (which later merged with Exxon to become ExxonMobil in 1999) for electronic payment. It was originally developed by Verifone. By 2004, more than ...
and
E-ZPass E-ZPass is an electronic toll collection system used on toll roads, toll bridges, and toll tunnels in the Eastern United States, Midwestern United States, and Southern United States. The E-ZPass Interagency Group (IAG) consists of member agencie ...
.


Education

Green received a B.S. from
Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
(Computer Science), a B.M. from
Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
(Electronic Music), a Master's from
Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
(Computer Science), and a PhD from
Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
(Computer Science). His dissertation was titled "Cryptography for Secure and Private Databases: Enabling Practical Data Access without Compromising Privacy".


Blog

Green is the author of the blog, "A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering". In September 2013, a blog post by Green summarizing and speculating on
NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...
's programs to weaken cryptography, titled "On the NSA", was controversially taken down by Green's academic dean at Johns Hopkins for "contain nga link or links to classified material and also
sing Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
the NSA logo". As
Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...
notes, this was "a strange request on its face", as this use of the NSA logo by Green was not "reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency", and linking classified information published by news organizations is legally entirely uncontroversial. The university later apologized to Green, and the blog post was restored (sans NSA logo), with a Johns Hopkins spokesman saying that "I'm not saying that there was a great deal of legal analysis done" as explanation for the legally unmotivated takedown. In addition to general blog posts about NSA, encryption, and security, Green's blog entries on NSA's backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG, and RSA Security's usage of the backdoored cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG), have been widely cited in the mainstream news media.


Work

Green currently holds the position of Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. He teaches courses pertaining to practical cryptography. Green is part of the group which developed
Zerocoin Zerocoin is a privacy protocol proposed in 2013 by Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew D. Green and his graduate students, Ian Miers and Christina Garman. It was designed as an extension to the Bitcoin protocol that would improve Bitcoi ...
, an anonymous
cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...
protocol. Zerocoin is a proposed extension to the
Bitcoin protocol The bitcoin network is a peer-to-peer payment network that operates on a cryptographic protocol. Users send and receive bitcoins, the units of currency, by broadcasting digitally-signed messages to the network using bitcoin cryptocurrency ...
that would add
anonymity Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Some writers have argued that namelessness, though technically correct, does not capture what is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea he ...
to
Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
transactions. Zerocoin provides anonymity by the introduction of a separate ''zerocoin'' cryptocurrency that is stored in the Bitcoin block chain. Though originally proposed for use with the Bitcoin network, zerocoin could be integrated into any
cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...
. His research team has exposed flaws in more than one third of
SSL/TLS Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in securi ...
encrypted web sites as well as vulnerabilities in encryption technologies, including RSA BSAFE, Exxon/Mobil
Speedpass Speedpass was a keychain radio-frequency identification (RFID) device introduced in 1997 by Mobil (which later merged with Exxon to become ExxonMobil in 1999) for electronic payment. It was originally developed by Verifone. By 2004, more than ...
,
E-ZPass E-ZPass is an electronic toll collection system used on toll roads, toll bridges, and toll tunnels in the Eastern United States, Midwestern United States, and Southern United States. The E-ZPass Interagency Group (IAG) consists of member agencie ...
, and automotive security systems. In 2015, Green was a member of the research team that identified the
Logjam A log jam is a naturally occurring phenomenon characterized by a dense accumulation of tree trunks and pieces of large wood across a vast section of a river, stream, or lake. ("Large wood" is commonly defined as pieces of wood more than in diame ...
vulnerability in the TLS protocol. Green started his career in 1999 at
AT&T Laboratories AT&T Laboratories, Inc. was the research & development division of AT&T Corporation. It was founded in 1925 as Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., following the merger of the research & development divisions of American Telephone & Telegraph an ...
in Florham Park, New Jersey. At AT&T Labs he worked on a variety of projects including audio coding/secure content distribution, streaming video and wireless localization services. As a graduate student he co-founded Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) with two fellow students and Avi Rubin in 2005. Green served as CTO of ISE until his departure in 2011. Green is a member of the technical advisory board for the Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative, formed to address critical Internet security concerns in the wake of the Heartbleed security bug disclosed in April 2014 in the
OpenSSL OpenSSL is a software library for applications that provide secure communications over computer networks against eavesdropping or need to identify the party at the other end. It is widely used by Internet servers, including the majority of HTT ...
cryptography library. He sits on the technical advisory boards for CipherCloud, Overnest and Mozilla Cybersecurity Delphi. Green co-founded and serves on the Board for Directors of the Open Crypto Audit Project (OCAP), which undertook a security audit of the
TrueCrypt TrueCrypt is a discontinued source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, or encrypt a partition or the whole storage device (pre-boot authentication). On 28 May ...
software.


See also

*
Crypto naming controversy The meaning of the word ''crypto'' as an abbreviation is controversial. Cryptographers - people who specialize in cryptography - have used the term "''crypto''" as an abbreviation for their field of study. However, "''crypto''" has also become a com ...


References


External links


Matthew D. Green
his personal page at Johns Hopkins University
A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering
his personal crypto blog
CE' website
his company page {{DEFAULTSORT:Green, Matthew D. 1976 births Living people Oberlin College alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni Johns Hopkins University faculty Modern cryptographers InfoSec Twitter