Shafi Goldwasser
More info
- Born
- Known for
- Probabilistic encryption, zero-knowledge proofs
- Award
- Turing Award 2012
- Nationality
- Israeli-American
Gave cryptography its proofs — before her a cipher was secure until someone broke it, after her security could be defined.
Israeli-American computer scientist, professor at MIT and the Weizmann Institute. With Silvio Micali she introduced probabilistic encryption in 1982 along with the definition of semantic security: a ciphertext must reveal nothing at all about the plaintext, not even a single bit, to any attacker with reasonable resources.
With Micali and Charles Rackoff she formulated zero-knowledge proofs in 1985 — how to convince someone a statement is true without revealing why. That idea now underpins everything from anonymous cryptocurrencies to authentication without transmitting a password. Turing Award 2012, shared with Micali.