 To the
numerically-challenged, Niederreiter's Scheme belongs to a
-totally different cognitive plane. The only recognisable bit
about the cryptography system is the name, and that is only
because this interviewer was seated across Harald
Niederreiter, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science,
in his tidy, book-lined office at the National University of
Singapore (NUS).
Cryptography is one of Niederreiter's many pursuits in
mathematics, which he describes as "a beautiful thing". The
professor, who chairs a security symposium organised by NUS
and IT services company Quantiq next week, was drawn to the
discipline in the early 1980s, when cryptography was making
the transition from an art to a science.
"I got involved at a time when
cryptography was coming of age. Before that, it was an art,
with no solid mathematical basis. People used their intuition
to design systems, and it often depended on experience that
had been passed down from generation to
generation."
Then came
the move from the intuitive to the scientific, and the
mathematician was drawn to the intellectual challenge. "We
were looking at number theory, factoring large integers into
prime numbersÉ It was interesting, trying to tackle the new
problems that emerged all the time," he says.
Niederreiter designed
several cryptography systems and in 1986, one of them - the
eponymous Niederreiter's Scheme Ð entered the mainstream of
the discipline.
Back
then, however, the scheme was thought to be too
computer-intensive to implement. Now, with advances in chip
technology, it has become a possibility and an European
company is currently doing research and development to
incorporate Niederreiter's Scheme as the encryption algorithm
for digital signature applications.
The implementation of digital signatures
is one of the key challenges -facing IT security today, says
Niederreiter. "One thing we would like to do in the electronic
world is to perform something we do in everyday life using our
own handwriting, and that is the signature. With a soft copy
of the document, there should also be a form of signature
which would be legally binding. It will be the complete
electronic analogue of our handwritten signatures," he
explains.
The other
challenge in IT security is the protection of intellectual
property rights, using the digital equivalent of a watermark.
"When you're in the
business of selling software, videos or music, especially in
ecommerce, you have to make sure you send the content to
authorised recipients, and you have to make sure the buyer
does not copy the product and send it on."
With the
incorporation of a watermark, only authorised users with the
key or personal identification number can access the
information, and it would be possible to block the illegal
copying of content.
Certainly, there are overheads in terms of the
infrastructure required to implement such systems, but that is
the price you pay for security, Niederreiter points out. "In
some industries like the banking sector, there is no way
around it. You have to safeguard information. The whole of
ecommerce stands or falls with security," he says.
And at the starting
point of the entire security value chain lies the
cryptographic problem , the design of the encryption
algorithm.
"It is very
challenging," says Niederreiter. "You design it in
mathematical terms, but the engineers will have to look at the
proposal to see if it is feasible to
implement."
The speed
of encryption, for example, is very important. "The user
should not know what is going on. There's no point using an
algorithm that takes five minutes to
execute."
The key in
algorithm design, he says, is that it has to be easy to
implement, fast and secure. This last point is a bit of a
moving target.
"There's always a competition between the designers and
hackers, and we always have to be aware of what tools the
hackers have to break into the system. Hackers are now more
sophisticated because the rewards are bigger as ecommerce
grows."
Niederreiter's
interest in IT security challenges stems from a long love
-affair with mathematics which began in high school, when it
dawned on him that he had a gift for the discipline.
What he was not so
sure about, then, was where this interest would lead him. "I
thought I would end up as a high school teacher of
mathematics. I did not know that there could be a career in
mathematics. And I certainly didn't realise that as a
professor of mathematics, you actually get a chance to
travel."
His first
overseas position as a career mathematician was to the United
States, where he joined the Southern Illinois University as an
assistant professor in 1969.
He describes his nine years in the United States as
"formative years" which moulded him in his career and his
outlook.
It was the
openness of the system, he says.
In 1978, the challenge of heading a
university department brought him to sunny Jamaica, where the
34-year-old Niederreiter was offered the Chair in Mathematics
at the University of the West Indies.
Then, having established himself overseas,
he went back to his native Austria in 1981 and served as
visiting professor in various universities around the world
before -arriving in Singapore last year.
Cryptography aside, Niederreiter maintains
a spread of interest in several -different areas of
mathematics. Just last month, he published a book on Monte
Carlo methods, which attempt to solve mathematical problems by
randomising them.
He
is also doing some work on symmetric cryptosystems, which
offer a higher level of security but present different sets of
challenges in areas such as key management.
"Many of these
problems may look different on the surface but there's always
the interconnection, a common thread. It's all mathematics,"
he says.
Tech Specs
1968 Received his PhD from the University of Vienna,
Austria.
1969
Appointed assistant professor, University of Vienna, and later
moved to Southern Illinois University, United
States.
1973-1978 Held
visiting positions at the Princeton Institute for Advanced
Study, University of California, and University of Illinois.
1978 Chair in
Mathematics, University of the West Indies.
1981 Joined Austrian
Academy of Sciences as research mathematician.
1989 Appointed
director, Institute of Information Processing, Austrian
Academy of Sciences.
1999 Appointed director, Institute of Discrete
Mathematics, Austrian Academy of Sciences.
2001 Professor of Mathematics and Computer
Science, National University of Singapore.
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