Home > Resources > papers > DH76-New-Directions

New Directions in Cryptography (Diffie, Hellman 1976)

Last modified: 2026-10-27

DOI: 10.1109/tit.1976.1055638 · URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1976.1055638

Summary

The founding paper of public-key cryptography: proposes public-key encryption and digital signatures and introduces Diffie–Hellman key exchange based on the hardness of discrete logarithms. The discrete-log setting it introduced underlies Schnorr/Sigma protocols, Pedersen commitments and most elliptic-curve-based ZKPs used in e-ID.

Related resources

• A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman 1978) (paper, 1978)
• A Public Key Cryptosystem and a Signature Scheme Based on Discrete Logarithms (ElGamal 1985) (paper, 1985)