description Taher ElGamal Overview
Taher ElGamal is an Egyptian-American cryptographer who, in his 1985 Stanford PhD dissertation, introduced the ElGamal discrete-logarithm public-key encryption and signature schemes, which influenced later standards including the Digital Signature Algorithm. As chief scientist at Netscape in the 1990s, he played a central role in the design of the original SSL protocol for secure web communication. He subsequently held leadership roles at Securify, RSA Security, and other security firms.
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Taher ElGamal ranks #60 of 185 in the Computer Scientist ranking, behind Stephen Boyd, ahead of Thomas Cover.
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What is the ElGamal encryption scheme?
The ElGamal encryption scheme, proposed by Taher ElGamal in 1985, is a public-key cryptosystem whose security relies on the computational difficulty of the discrete logarithm problem in finite fields. It provides probabilistic encryption, meaning the same plaintext encrypts differently each time, which is important for semantic security.
How is ElGamal encryption related to Diffie-Hellman key exchange?
ElGamal encryption is closely related to the Diffie-Hellman key exchange: it effectively uses Diffie-Hellman to establish a shared secret and then encrypts the message by multiplying it with a derived value. ElGamal extended the Diffie-Hellman concept into a full public-key encryption system.
What did Taher ElGamal do in industry?
ElGamal served as Chief Security Officer at Netscape Communications in the 1990s and is often credited as the 'father of SSL' (Secure Sockets Layer) for his role in developing the protocol that secures web communication. He has also held roles at RSA Security, Hewlett-Packard, and as a cybersecurity entrepreneur.
Where was the ElGamal cryptosystem originally published?
The ElGamal encryption scheme was published in a 1985 paper in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory titled 'A Public Key Cryptosystem and a Signature Scheme Based on Discrete Logarithms.' The digital signature variant also described in the paper later became the basis for the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA).
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