Some reasons why a particular publication might be regarded as important:
- Topic creator – A publication that created a new topic
- Breakthrough – A publication that changed scientific knowledge significantly
- Influence – A publication which has significantly influenced the world or has had a massive impact on the teaching of cryptography.
The index of coincidence and its applications in cryptology
- Friedman, William F. (1922). "The index of coincidence and its applications in cryptology". Department of Ciphers. Publ 22. Geneva, Illinois, USA: Riverbank Laboratories.
Treatise on the Enigma
Description: The breaking of the Enigma.
The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing
- Kahn, David (1967). The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing. New York: The Macmillan Company. ISBN 978-0-684-83130-5.OCLC 59019141
Description: Almost nothing had been published in cryptography in several decades and very few non-government researchers were thinking about it. The Codebreakers, a popular and non academic book, made many more people aware and contains a lot of technical information, although it requires careful reading to extract it. Its 1967 appearance was followed by the appearance of many papers over the next few years.
Differential Cryptanalysis of DES-like Cryptosystems
- Biham, Eli; Shamir, Adi (1991). "Differential Cryptanalysis of DES-like Cryptosystems". Journal of Cryptology. 4 (1): 3–72. doi:10.1007/bf00630563. S2CID 206783462.
Description: The method of differential cryptanalysis.
A new method for known plaintext attack of FEAL cipher
- Matsui, Mitsuru; Yamagishi, Atsuhiro (1993). "A New Method for Known Plaintext Attack of FEAL Cipher". Advances in Cryptology — EUROCRYPT '92. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 658. pp. 81–91. doi:10.1007/3-540-47555-9_7. ISBN 978-3-540-56413-3.
Description: The method of linear cryptanalysis.
Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems
- Shannon, C.E. (1949). "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems" (PDF). Bell System Technical Journal. 28 (28–4): 656–715. doi:10.1002/j.1538-7305.1949.tb00928.x. hdl:10338.dmlcz/119717.
Description: Information theory based analysis of cryptography. The original form of this paper was a confidential Bell Labs report from 1945, not the one published.
- Goldwasser, Shafi; Micali, Silvio (April 1984). "Probabilistic Encryption" (PDF). Journal of Computer and System Sciences. 28 (2): 270–299. doi:10.1016/0022-0000(84)90070-9.
Description: The paper provides a rigorous basis to encryption (e.g., partial information) and shows that it possible to equate the slightest cryptanalysis to solve a pure math problem. Second, it introduces the notion of computational indistinguishability.
Proofs that Yield Nothing But their Validity or All Languages in NP have Zero-Knowledge Proofs
- Goldreich, O.; Micali, S.; Wigderson, A. (July 1991). "Proofs that yield nothing but their validity or all languages in NP have zero-knowledge proof systems" (PDF). Journal of the ACM. 38 (3): 690–728. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.420.1478. doi:10.1145/116825.116852. S2CID 2389804.
Cryptographic Coding for Data-Bank Privacy
- Feistel, Horst (18 March 1970). "Cryptographic Coding for Data-Bank Privacy". IBM Research Report 2827.
Description: Feistel ciphers are a form of cipher of which DES is the most important. It would be hard to overestimate the importance of either Feistel or DES. Feistel pushed a transition from stream ciphers to block ciphers. Although most ciphers operate on streams, most of the important ciphers today are block ciphers at their core.
- NBS Federal Standard FIPS PUB 46, 15 Jan 1977.
Description: DES is not only one of the most widely deployed ciphers in the world but has had a profound impact on the development of cryptography. Roughly a generation of cryptographers devoted much of their time to attacking and improving DES.
New directions in cryptography
- Diffie, W.; Hellman, M. (1976). "New directions in cryptography" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 22 (6): 644–654. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.37.9720. doi:10.1109/TIT.1976.1055638.
Description: This paper suggested public key cryptography and presented Diffie–Hellman key exchange. For more information about this work see: W.Diffie, M.E.Hellman, "Privacy and Authentication: An Introduction to Cryptography", in Proc. IEEE, Vol 67(3) Mar 1979, pp 397–427.
On the Signature Reblocking Problem in Public Key Cryptography
- Kohnfelder, Loren M. (1978). "On the Signature Reblocking Problem in Public Key Cryptography". Communications of the ACM. 21 (2): 179.
Description: In this paper (along with Loren M. Kohnfelder,"Using Certificates for Key Distribution in a Public-Key Cryptosystem", MIT Technical report 19 May 1978), Kohnfelder introduced certificates (signed messages containing public keys) which are the heart of all modern key management systems.
Secure Communications Over Insecure Channels
- Merkle, R. C. (April 1978). "Secure Communications Over Insecure Channels". Communications of the ACM. 21 (4): 294–299. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.364.5157. doi:10.1145/359460.359473. S2CID 6967714.
Description: This paper introduced a branch of public key cryptography, known as public key distribution systems. Merkle's work predated "New directions in cryptography" though it was published after it. The Diffie–Hellman key exchange is an implementation of such a Merkle system. Hellman himself has argued that a more correct name would be Diffie–Hellman–Merkle key exchange.
A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public Key Cryptosystems
- Rivest, R. L.; Shamir, A.; Adleman, L. (1978). "A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems". Communications of the ACM. 21 (2): 120–126. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.607.2677. doi:10.1145/359340.359342. S2CID 2873616. Archived from the original on 2003-12-04.
- Shamir, A. (November 1979). "How to share a secret". Communications of the ACM. 22 (11): 612–613. doi:10.1145/359168.359176. S2CID 16321225. Archived from the original on 2015-05-04.
Description: A safe method for sharing a secret.
On the security of public key protocols
- Dolev, D.; Yao, A. (1983). "On the security of public key protocols". IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 29 (2): 198–208. doi:10.1109/TIT.1983.1056650. ISSN 0018-9448. S2CID 13643880.
Description: Introduced the adversarial model against which almost all cryptographic protocols are judged.
Using encryption for authentication in large networks of computers
- Needham, R. M.; Schroeder, M. D. (1978). "Using encryption for authentication in large networks of computers" (PDF). Communications of the ACM. 21 (12): 993–999. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.357.4298. doi:10.1145/359657.359659. S2CID 7704786.
- Neuman, B.C.; Ts'o, T. (1994). "Kerberos: an authentication service for computer networks". IEEE Communications Magazine. 32 (9): 33–38. doi:10.1109/35.312841. ISSN 0163-6804. S2CID 45031265.
- Steiner, J. G.; Neuman, B. C.; Schiller, J. I. (February 1988). "Kerberos: an authentication service for open network systems". Usenix Conference Proceedings. Dallas, Texas.[permanent dead link]
A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection
- Cerf, Vint; Kahn, Bob (1974). "A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Communication Technology. 22 (5): 637–648. doi:10.1109/tcom.1974.1092259.
A Dynamic Network Architecture
- O'Malley, Sean W.; Peterson, Larry L. (May 1992). "A Dynamic Network Architecture". ACM Transactions on Computer Systems. 10 (2): 110–143. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.38.6159. doi:10.1145/128899.128901. S2CID 17134910.
Description: Network software in distributed systems.