Niels T. Ferguson (born 10 December 1965, Eindhoven) is a Dutch cryptographer and consultant who currently works for

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

. He has worked with others, including Bruce Schneier, designing cryptographic

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

, testing algorithms and protocols, and writing papers and books. Among the designs Ferguson has contributed to is the

AES finalist The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the symmetric block cipher ratified as a standard by National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States (NIST), was chosen using a process lasting from 1997 to 2000 that was markedly more ...

block cipher algorithm

Twofish In cryptography, Twofish is a symmetric key block cipher with a block size of 128 bits and key sizes up to 256 bits. It was one of the five finalists of the Advanced Encryption Standard contest, but it was not selected for standardization. T ...

as well as the stream cipher Helix and the

Skein hash function Skein is a cryptographic hash function and one of five finalists in the NIST hash function competition. Entered as a candidate to become the SHA-3 standard, the successor of SHA-1 and SHA-2, it ultimately lost to NIST hash candidate Keccak. Th ...

. In 1999, Niels Ferguson, together with Bruce Schneier and John Kelsey, developed the Yarrow algorithm, a Cryptographically-Secure Pseudorandom Number Generator (CSPRNG). Yarrow was later further developed by Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier into the Fortuna CSPRNG In 2001, he claimed to have broken the

HDCP High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across connections. Types of connections include DisplayPor ...

system that is incorporated into HD DVD and

Blu-ray Disc The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

s players, similar to the DVDs Content Scramble System, but has not published his research, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which would make such publication illegal. In 2006 he published a paper covering some of his work around Bitlocker full disk encryption at Microsoft.http://css.csail.mit.edu/6.858/2012/readings/bitlocker.pdf At the CRYPTO 2007 conference rump session, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson presented an informal paper describing a potential kleptographic backdoor in the NIST specified Dual_EC_DRBG cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator. The kleptographic backdoor was confirmed to be real in 2013 as part of the Edward Snowden leaks.

References

External links

Short bio
at the ORD-GROUP site.
Ferguson chooses not to publish his results because he fears being prosecuted under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

On the Possibility of a Back Door in the NIST SP800-90 Dual Ec Prng
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferguson, Niels Dutch cryptographers Modern cryptographers Microsoft employees People from Eindhoven 1965 births Living people