Talk:Clifford Cocks

Misnamed?

His accomplishment was early public key cryptography, not RSA (they wish). And they were preceded, and he was succeeded by Diffie and Hellman. Not that I ever visited GCHQ. 143.232.210.150 (talk) 17:42, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, it is essentially RSA. The difference is that they selected N=pq as the fixed encryption exponent, and then were using the Chinese remainder theorem with the help of the inverses of p mod q-1 and q mod p-1 to recover the original message. In the end it comes down to the same hardness problem as for RSA: factorization of N, or computing a discrete root. They claim that they invented this in 1973, so it was quite some time earlier than both Diffie and Hellman's paper and RSA. Nageh (talk) 18:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Just because Cock's scheme relies on the hardness of the same problems, does not mean that the schemes are equal. I agree that Cock's scheme is somewhat similar to RSA, but I would deny that Cock in fact invented RSA. 141.3.32.141 (talk) 14:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

No, they are a lot closer than somewhat similar. From either a mathematical or cryptanalytic perspective they seem identical. Can you be clear on just what difference you see? Dingo1729 (talk) 15:27, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

There is a difference in the presentation. McEliece's and Niederreiter's cryptosystems are equivalent, too. Yet I would not say that McEliece invented the Niederreiter Cryptosystem, would you? 141.3.32.141 (talk) 15:04, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the McEliece/Niederreiter crypto. But as for Cocks/RSA it's clear that Cocks and Rivest, Shamir & Adelman discovered the same algorithm independently and that it's known as RSA. It's really not that important who got there first. There are numerous theorems which have been discovered independently. The names on them aren't a sign of ownership; sometimes the same theorem is known by different names in different countries. Many theorems and algorithms have the "wrong" name, and it doesn't matter. What matters are the ideas, not who had them. The current wording in the article looks OK to me but if you want to suggest a different wording go ahead. Dingo1729 (talk) 01:29, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Made a fellow of the royal society

This probably needs to go in the article. https://royalsociety.org/people/fellowship/2015/clifford-cocks/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.132.222.244 (talk) 10:42, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Awards / Honours incomplete

The awards and honours section is incomplete. It probably needs to include his CB, which is a significant UK honour (This is referenced in the article already). The Gold Medal from the Institute of Mathematics and it's Applications, presented by HRH Princess Royal (Princess Ann) should go there too. http://www.gchq.gov.uk/press_and_media/news_and_features/Pages/GCHQs-Public-Key-Cryptography-pioneer-receives-award.aspx

81.140.13.150 (talk) 10:13, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Citations

"Educated in Manchester"; "created Heilbronn Institute"; and various other bits is cited here http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pace/graduation/honorary-degrees/hondeg08/cocks.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by DanBCDanBC (talk • contribs) 10:32, 16 January 2016 (UTC)