Talk:James H. Ellis

Untitled

The paper apparently lacked an author, so the ancestry of the idea may not be further traceable. The system conjectured in the paper (C43) was probably SIGSALY, which was actually built. It is not clear from Ellis' account whether he knew of it.

Sorry to cut this again, ww, but it likely wasn't SIGSALY. The idea mentioned was just theoretical, and it was the receiver added and then subtracted noise from the channel. In SIGSALY, it's the sender who adds the noise to the message, and then the receiver removes it — very symmetric key. — Matt 23:05, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Matt, I keep trying... Sigh... The information about c43 was taken directly from Ellis' own paper and was added to buttress the previously removed material. On the question of whether SIGSALY was or was not c43 I have no information, but I seriously doubt there were two projects at Bell Labs with the same approach.

My point is they weren't the same approach. One was a one-time pad, the other was a purely theoretical exercise. — Matt 15:15, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

. American WWII crypto R&D may have been lavish in UK eyes (it certainly was in re the bombes, aside from political control issues) but it's not plausible that it was that lavish. That Ellis does not make the connection between the two (if they were two) is, as nearly as I can make out, accountable by secrecy re SIGSALY and corresponding compartmentalization. Open source was precisely 180 away from the way these folks operated and continue to operate insofar as I can make out current practice. Said speculation in this case, if fairly identified, is appropriate as semiexpert evaluation of the currently unknown probabilities.

As for your description of how c43 worked in contrast to SIGSALY, your comment is opaque. How would the receiver having added and then subtracted noise to the channel have impeded an Adversary? You've lost me. ww 14:48, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well that's the cunning bit. Alice adds her noise e to the line for, say, 30 seconds, while Bob sends the message M. Thus, the line carries the signal, M + e. So both Alice and Eve get M + e. But because Alice knows the noise e, she can subtract it to recover the message: M + e - e = M. Eve is stumped, however. SIGSALY, by contrast, requires both Alice and Bob to know e. So SIGSALY is very symmetric key crypto, while C43 foreshadows public key cryptography. — Matt 15:15, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Matt, Much becomes clear that I'd speed read over. Got to take that Evelyn Wood refresher one of these days. Sorry about that.

This would be impossible to do in many electrical situations and I see why it went no further than a report. I'm still curious to know whether Ellis was aware of SIGSALY or not.

As for your suggestion that they are fundamentally different, well... From an information theoretic perspective (I can just smell Shannon in the background of both SIGSALY and c43, can't you), they're just about the same, cryptanalytically. From the perspective of who has the noise (ie, one time pad key material) and who does just what with it (ie, operational issues and security issues), there's a good bit of difference, of course. Very related concepts -- if you approach from a particular perspective. ww 18:12, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There

In the third line, "there" might refer to Britain or Australia.

Dubious

The section on early career does not tally up with the facts about those organisations.

• In 1952 GCHQ was at Eastcote.
• Between 1952 and 1954, GCHQ entirely relocated to Cheltenham, but the security function were split off into the independent LCSA (London Communications Security Agency), which remained at Eastcote. In 1958 it renamed to the London Communications-Electronic Security Agency (LCESA).
• In April 1965, GPO and MOD units merged with LCESA to become the Communications-Electronic Security Department (CESD) - still at Eastcote.
• In October 1969, CESD was merged into GCHQ and becoming Communications-Electronic Security Group - still at Eastcote.
• In 1977 CESG relocated from Eastcote to Cheltenham.

Therefore Ellis cannot have worked from 1952 to 1965 for GCHQ at Eastcote, and cannot have then relocated in 1965 to Cheltenham to work for CESG. Mauls (talk) 15:04, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

GCHQ CESG Research Report No. 3006 yields 404 Not found

The link to "GCHQ CESG Research Report No. 3006" https://www.gchq.gov.uk/sites/default/files/document_files/CESG_Research_Report_No_3006_0.pdf yields a 404 error - page not found. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:E0:3F0B:D000:1CDB:EDD:3058:8579 (talk) 10:46, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Very Dubious Section

I suspect the time lines and roles of those mentioned are inaccurate. By 1974 this was not the reality at GCHQ. His initial PKI work was in the later 1960s - and was very basic - he had the essence and that was it - this does not align with a number of sources - the RSA claim is likely too much and likely easily disproven.

Not sure of any connection with RSA and Ellis - it is worth exploring - perhaps.

Cock's is credited with PKI - at least by most authorities - Ellis is barely a footnote.

"Shortly after joining GCHQ in September 1973, after studying mathematics at Cambridge University, Clifford Cocks was told of Ellis' proof and that no one had been able to figure out a way to implement it. He went home, thought about it, and returned with the basic idea for what has become known as the RSA asymmetric key encryption algorithm. Because any new (sic) and potentially beneficial/harmful technique developed by GCHQ is by definition classified information, the discovery was kept secret." BeingObjective (talk) 03:42, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Article Cleaned Up

Cleaned this article up - this was a 'legacy' article - made a good faith effort to clean up and add citations that were credible. Still uncertain of some reversion recently made - education as an example, but left as found for a future editor. It reads far better and the citations that are here are robust. BeingObjective (talk) 03:18, 18 November 2023 (UTC)