1883: Auguste Kerckhoffs publishes “La Cryptographie Militaire,” proposing fundamental principles of cryptography.
1917: Gilbert Vernam and Joseph Mauborgne invent the one-time pad, a theoretically unbreakable encryption method.
1921: Edward Hebern patents the rotor machine, an early electromechanical encryption device.
1940-1945: Allied cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park turn the tide of World War 2 by decrypting Nazi Germany’s Enigma machine.
1949: Claude Shannon publishes “Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems,” establishing the mathematical basis of modern cryptography.
1976: Data Encryption Standard (DES) is adopted by the US government as a standard for sensitive data.
1976: Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman publish “New Directions in Cryptography,” introducing the concept of public-key cryptography.
1977: The RSA algorithm is invented by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, implementing practical public-key cryptography.
1978: Ralph Merkle introduces the concept of cryptographic hash functions.
1985: Diffie-Hellman key exchange method is published, allowing secure key distribution over insecure channels.
1991: Phil Zimmermann releases Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), combining symmetric and asymmetric encryption for email security.
1995: Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is developed by Netscape, laying the foundation for secure internet communications.
2000: NIST launches the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) competition to replace DES.
2001: AES (Rijndael) is selected as the new encryption standard, offering key sizes of 128, 192, or 256 bits.
2006: Post-Quantum Cryptography research begins in earnest, focusing on algorithms resistant to quantum computer attacks.
2008: Bitcoin is introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto, utilizing cryptography and blockchain technology for a decentralized digital currency.
2009: Craig Gentry proposes the first Fully Homomorphic Encryption scheme, allowing computation on encrypted data.
2016: Signal Protocol is developed, providing secure end-to-end encryption for instant messaging and voice calls.
2017: China launches Micius, the world’s first quantum communications satellite, demonstrating long-distance quantum key distribution.
2019: Google claims to achieve quantum supremacy, raising concerns about the future security of current cryptographic systems.
2024: Ongoing development of quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms and standards by NIST and other organizations.