High-Tech Hunger
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10756796/site/newsweek/
The Goal: Make China a technology powerhouse-critics say by any means
necessary. Inside Beijing's '863 program.'
By Melinda Liu
Newsweek International
Jan. 16, 2006 issue - Don't be fooled by Wang Xiaoyun's demure
demeanor. The 39-year-old mathematician is an instrument of China's
campaign to become a tech power. She is also a legend among Western
cryptographers. "Please don't write too much about my research; it's so
difficult for journalists to get the technical details right," Wang
pleads in rapid-fire English and Shandong dialect. She has a point:
let's just say she and two colleagues shocked the cryptography world
last year when they exposed a weakness in a key U.S. government
encryption code called SHA-1, thought to be virtually unbreakable.
Renowned MIT cryptographer Robert Rivest, who helped develop the SHA-1
algorithm, calls the breakthrough "stunning." (The SHA-1 "hash" is
used, among other things, in technologies that transmit credit-card
numbers over the Internet.)
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