Ian Avrum Goldberg (born March 31, 1973) is a

cryptographer Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...

and

cypherpunk A cypherpunk is one who advocates the widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a means of effecting social and political change. The cypherpunk movement originated in the late 1980s and gained traction with th ...

. He is best known for breaking Netscape's implementation of SSL (with David Wagner), and for his role as chief scientist of Radialpoint (formerly Zero Knowledge Systems), a Canadian software company. Goldberg is currently a professor at the Faculty of Mathematics of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science within the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

, and the Canada Research Chair in Privacy Enhancing Technologies. He was formerly

Tor Project The Tor Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) research-education nonprofit organization based in Winchester, Massachusetts. It is founded by computer scientists Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson, and five others. The Tor Project is primarily responsibl ...

board of directors chairman, and is one of the designers of off the record messaging.

Education

Goldberg attended high school at the

University of Toronto Schools University of Toronto Schools (UTS) is an independent secondary day school affiliated with the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school follows a specialized academic curriculum, and admission is determined by a written exam ...

, graduating in 1991. In 1995, he received a B.Math from the

pure mathematics Pure mathematics is the study of mathematical concepts independently of any application outside mathematics. These concepts may originate in real-world concerns, and the results obtained may later turn out to be useful for practical applications ...

and computer science. He obtained a Ph.D. from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in December 2000. His thesis was entitled ''A Pseudonymous Communications Infrastructure for the Internet''. His advisor was Eric Brewer.

Accomplishments

As a high school student, Goldberg was a member of Canada's team to the

International Math Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for Student competition, pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. It is widely regarded as the most prestigious mathematical comp ...

from 1989 to 1991, where he received a bronze, silver, and gold medal respectively. He was also a member of

team that won the

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the university, universities of the world. Directed by ICPC Executive Director and Baylor Professor William B. Poucher, th ...

in 1994. In 1998, ''Wired'' Magazine chose him as a member of the "Wired 25". In 2011 he won the

EFF Pioneer Award The EFF Award, formerly EFF Pioneer Award, is an annual prize by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for people who have made significant contributions to the empowerment of individuals in using computers. Venue Until 1998 it was presented ...

. In 2019, he won the

USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...

Security Test of Time Award along with his colleagues David Wagner and Randi Thomas and former PhD supervisor Eric Brewer. In 2023, he was named an

ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

Work in cryptography

In 1995, Goldberg with David Wagner discovered a flaw in the

random number generator Random number generation is a process by which, often by means of a random number generator (RNG), a sequence of numbers or symbols is generated that cannot be reasonably predicted better than by random chance. This means that the particular ou ...

used for temporary key generation in the SSL implementation of

Netscape Navigator The 1990s releases of the Netscape (web browser), Netscape line referred to as Netscape Navigator were a series of now discontinued web browsers. from versions 1 to 4.08. It was the Core product, flagship product of the Netscape, Netscape Comm ...

. One of the first cryptanalyses on the WEP wireless encryption protocol was conducted by Goldberg with Nikita Borisov and David Wagner, revealing serious flaws in its design. Goldberg was a co-author of the Off-the-Record

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

encryption protocol. He is also the author of the

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

script included in the novel ''

Cryptonomicon ''Cryptonomicon'' is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II–era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the British Govern ...

'' by

Neal Stephenson Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and baroque. Stephenson's work explores mathemati ...

. In 2009 Goldberg was co-author of the Sphinx Mix Format, which is nowadays implemented with the extension of a per-hop payload to increase the privacy of both payer and payee while routing

Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

payments through the

Lightning Network The Lightning Network (LN) is a payment protocol built on the bitcoin blockchain. It is intended to enable fast transactions among participating nodes (independently run members of the network) and has been proposed as a solution to the bitcoin sca ...

Vitalik Buterin Vitaly Dmitrievich Buterin (; born 31 January 1994), better known as Vitalik Buterin (), is a Canadian computer programmer and co-founder of Ethereum. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding ''Bitcoin Ma ...

, co-founder of

Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (abbreviation: ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-s ...

, was a research assistant of Goldberg while a student at the

. Goldberg is a member of the Cryptography, Security and Privacy group as well as the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI). He has been collaborating with the CPI works on the development of a new interdisciplinary research and education program.

Notes and references

:
Experience With Top Gun Wingman: A Proxy-Based Graphical Web Browser for the

3Com 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe ex ...

PalmPilot The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc (then a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics, later 3Com). These devices were launched on March 10, 1997. Accessories and pricing ...

br>
:
Wingman: A web browser created for the Palm Pilot PDA
:
BARWAN research project, UC Berkeley (1995-1998)
:
ISAAC research group, UC Berkeley (1996-2005)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldberg, Ian 1973 births Living people Canadian computer scientists Modern cryptographers University of Waterloo alumni Cypherpunks University of California, Berkeley alumni Academic staff of the University of Waterloo International Mathematical Olympiad participants Competitive programmers 2023 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery

Education

Accomplishments

Work in cryptography

See also

Notes and references

External links