Nicholas van Someren (born 1967) is a British

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

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 entrepreneur. He is known for having founded ANT Software, and nCipher, as well as for previous roles as chief security architect at

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including Router (computing), routers, Network switch, switches, network management so ...

and chief technology officer at

Good Technology Good Technology, owned by BlackBerry Limited, is a mobile security provider headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company serves more than 5,000 organizations worldwide in industries such as financial services, healthcare, m ...

and the

Linux Foundation The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to support Linux development and open-source software projects. Background The Linux Foundation started as Open Source Development Labs in 2000 to standardize and prom ...

, where he ran the

Core Infrastructure Initiative The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) was a project of the Linux Foundation to fund and support free and open-source software projects that are critical to the functioning of the Internet and other major information systems. The project was ann ...

. He is currently the chief technology officer at Absolute Software Corporation.

Education and early life

Van Someren attended King College Choir School in

Cambridge, UK Cambridge ( ) is a city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of t ...

before receiving a scholarship to

Oakham School Oakham School is a public school (English fee-charging boarding and day school) in Oakham, Rutland, England. The school was founded in 1584 by Archdeacon Robert Johnson, along with Uppingham School, a few miles away. They share a common b ...

Rutland Rutland is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Leicestershire to the north and west, Lincolnshire to the north-east, and Northamptonshire to the south-west. Oakham is the largest town and county town. Rutland has a ...

. He went on to study as an undergraduate in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

, where he subsequently earned a PhD. Van Someren credits his interest in business to his father, who ran a business from their home when he was young. While still at school van Someren took summer jobs with

Acorn Computers Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England in 1978 by Hermann Hauser, Christopher Curry (businessman), Chris Curry and Andy Hopper. The company produced a number of computers during the 1980s with asso ...

and acquired an interest in cryptography by reading about public key encryption in

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...

Businesses

In 1992 Nicko van Someren and his brother Alex van Someren, along with two friends, founded ANT Software to build networking hardware. While with ANT, van Someren wrote the first version of the Fresco web browser which helped the company move from being primarily a hardware company to a software company. ANT went public on the London

Alternative Investments Market AIM (formerly the Alternative Investment Market) is a sub-market of the London Stock Exchange that was launched on 19 June 1995 as a replacement to the previous Unlisted Securities Market (USM) that had been in operation since 1980. It allows ...

in March 2005. In February 2013 ANT was acquired by Espial Group. In 1996 van Someren, along with his brother Alex co-founded nCipher to build high speed

cryptographic accelerator In computing, a cryptographic accelerator is a co-processor designed specifically to perform computationally intensive cryptographic operations, doing so far more efficiently than the general-purpose CPU. Because many servers' system loads consis ...

s and

hardware security module A hardware security module (HSM) is a physical computing device that safeguards and manages secrets (most importantly digital keys), and performs encryption and decryption functions for digital signatures, strong authentication and other crypt ...

s. nCipher went public on the

London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...

in October 2000, at the time valuing the company at around £450 million. In October 2008 nCipher was acquired by Thales Group. Van Someren was chief security architect at

,The Linux Foundation Appoints New Chief Technology Officer, Open Source Community Veterans to Executive Team

, February 11, 2016 then joined

as CTO in 2011, and remained with Good until its acquisition by

BlackBerry Limited BlackBerry Limited, formerly Research In Motion (RIM), is a Canadian software company specializing in secure communications and the Internet of things, Internet of Things (IoT). Founded in 1984, it developed the BlackBerry brand of Interactiv ...

in 2015. He was then appointed to be CTO of the

. In 2019, van Someren joined Absolute Software Corporation as CTO.

Accomplishments

In 2008 van Someren was elected as a Fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...

in the UK.

Work in computer security

Van Someren has published numerous papers in the field of

computer security Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and computer network, n ...

. In 1998 he co-authored a paper with

Adi Shamir Adi Shamir (; born July 6, 1952) is an Israeli cryptographer and inventor. He is a co-inventor of the Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) algorithm (along with Ron Rivest and Len Adleman), a co-inventor of the Feige–Fiat–Shamir identification sc ...

introducing the concept of

key finding attacks Key finding attacks are attacks on computer systems that make use of cryptography in which computer memory or non-volatile storage is searched for private cryptographic keys that can be used to decrypt or sign data. The term is generally used in t ...

. A statistical key finding attack was used by van Someren to locate the signature verification keys used by Microsoft to validate the signatures on MS-CAPI plug-ins. One of these key was later discovered to be referred to as the NSAKEY by Microsoft, sparking some controversy.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:van Someren, Nicko 1967 births Living people People educated at Oakham School British computer scientists Modern cryptographers Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge British chief technology officers