Eli Biham

Differential cryptanalysis

Eli Biham is a cryptographer and cryptanalyst at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. His doctoral work, supervised by Adi Shamir, publicly developed differential cryptanalysis: a method for studying how input differences propagate through a cipher. Biham and Shamir documented the method and its application to the Data Encryption Standard in their book Differential Cryptanalysis of the Data Encryption Standard.

Research and teaching

The Technion describes Biham's research as spanning cryptography, cryptanalysis, computer security and quantum cryptography. He helped design the Serpent block cipher with Ross Anderson and Lars Knudsen; Serpent was an AES finalist. His professional biography also records service as founding head of the Technion Hiroshi Fujiwara Cyber Security Research Center and recognition as an IACR Fellow.

Timeline

• 1982Completes undergraduate studies in mathematics and computer science at Tel Aviv University.
• 1991Completes a PhD at the Weizmann Institute and joins the Technion faculty.
• 1993Publishes Differential Cryptanalysis of the Data Encryption Standard with Adi Shamir.
• 2012Named an IACR Fellow.