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One of those concepts that seems almost too sophisticated to be practical is secret sharing, which has been operating covertly for more than 40 years beneath the…
One type of academic paper doesn’t shout. Arriving on arXiv on a Thursday night, it undergoes a quiet revision eleven days later. Over the course of years,…
There is a specific type of cryptography issue that subtly affects everything, from the encrypted whisper between two satellites to the chip in a bank card. That…
The way theoretical computer science keeps returning to issues that, on paper, appear to have been resolved decades ago is almost comical. That includes linear threshold predicates.…
A theoretical computer science conference has an almost antiquated feel to it. People travel from all over the world, sit in hotel ballrooms with subpar coffee, and…
Information theory and coding have a subtle stubbornness to them. It doesn’t follow any trends. It doesn’t receive eye-catching magazine covers. However, practically every digital moment of…
At the heart of theoretical computer science, there is an unanswered question that is worth precisely one million dollars to the person who can answer it. It…
The way cryptographers discuss non-malleability has an odd stillness about it, as though the concept itself defies simple explanation. At conferences, usually late in the day, you…
Thirty years ago, a mathematician named Peter Shor produced a brief paper that subtly changed the course of history. At the time, the idea of creating a…
Some political mischief doesn’t need a bag of cash or a smoke-filled chamber. All you need is a map and a little perseverance. One of the oldest…
Hard drives are silently building up somewhere in an unremarkable server farm, perhaps in Virginia or a Chinese state that neither nation will openly admit. Anyone who…