Arthur Levenson
Arthur J. Levenson | |
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Public key cryptography | |
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Arthur J. Levenson (February 15, 1914 – August 12, 2007) was a
codes.Biography
Arthur J. Levenson was born in Brooklyn, New York. He earned a B.S. in Mathematics from the City College of New York. He did graduate work in mathematics at New York University and Columbia University. He attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. Levenson was a graduate of the National War College. Levenson and his wife Marjorie West (1917–2011) are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.[1]
World War II Service
At the beginning of World War II, the Army called Mr.
In a 1999 PBS documentary about the decoding project, Mr. Levenson said the team at Bletchley sometimes deciphered the German messages before German forces in the field could read them. "If it was something hot," he said, "it'd get out in the field before the German commander got his." In one case, Mr. Levenson said, the team decoded a message from German military leader Erwin Rommel and determined that German tanks were converging at a spot in Normandy where U.S. paratroopers were planning to jump. "They were going to drop one of the airborne divisions right on top of a German tank division," Mr. Levenson said in the documentary. "They would have been massacred." At the last moment, plans were changed, and the paratroopers averted disaster.[5]
National Security Agency
After completing his service overseas, he remained in the cryptologic business as a civilian with the organizations that eventually evolved into the National Security Agency. He was a member and subsequently Chief of the Technical Consultants Group, the prestigious cryptanalytic organization where the most difficult problems were attacked. During that period he initiated the program for sending out selected NSA working mathematicians to participate in the recruitment of promising college math students-a program that greatly enhanced the quality of the growing NSA professional work force.
When the Office of Production in NSA was re-structured to better focus its attacks he was selected to organize and serve as the first Chief of ADVA, an organization dedicated to the exploitation of Soviet high-grade encryption systems. He led the design and implementation of the technical attack team. He took the lead in procuring high-level government support for the project from experts like
Data Encryption Standard
In 1976, after retiring from NSA, Levenson and NSA and NBS representatives met with the Stanford University cryptography team which had publicly criticized NSA's proposed Data Encryption Standard, DES, as being too easy to crack. In this meeting with Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, and Paul Baran, he tried to convince the critics that "56 [bits] is quite adequate", because (among other reasons) brute force attack would never be the weakest link in the security of systems that used DES.[6][unreliable source?] NSA succeeded in getting broad adoption of 56-bit DES, particularly in the financial industry. This allowed NSA and other countries to decipher most of the world's financial transactions, until the EFF DES cracker convinced banks to switch to stronger ciphers in 1998.[citation needed]
Family
He was married for 62 years to Marjorie West Levenson of Washington. He had three children, David West Levenson of Warren, N.J., Sarah Stromeyer of Austin and Rebecca Levenson Smith of Silver Spring; and two grandchildren.[5]
Awards
Levenson was awarded the NSA Exceptional Civilian Service Award in 1969. and was inducted to the NSA Hall of Honor in 2009.[7]
References
- ^ Burial Detail: Levenson, Arthur J – ANC Explorer
- ^ a b c Farley, R. D. (November 25, 1980). "Oral History Interview with Arthur J. Levenson" (PDF). NSA.gov. Retrieved October 7, 2009.
- ^ Martin, Douglas (October 7, 2000). "William P. Bundy, 83, Dies; Advised 3 Presidents on American Policy in Vietnam". The New York Times. Retrieved August 10, 2018.
- ^ "Roll of Honour – Arthur J Levenson". Bletchley Park. Retrieved August 10, 2018.
- ^ a b c Schudel, Matt (September 5, 2007). "Longtime NSA Official Arthur J. Levenson". The Washington Post.
- ^ Gilmore, John, ed. (1976). "DES Stanford-NBS-NSA meeting record & transcript". toad.com. Archived from the original on May 3, 2012. Retrieved February 1, 2019.
- ^ "Hall of Honor Inductees: 2009". NSA.gov. May 3, 2016. Retrieved August 10, 2018.
External links
- "Arthur J. Levenson, Lieutenant Colonel, United States Army". ArlingtonCemetery.net. an unofficial website.