Hot on the heels of Diffie-Hellman upending the cryptography applecart in 1976 came three more crypto newcomers that further revolutionized the field: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. The trio devised a way to negotiate secure communication between unknown parties over distance, which turns out to be centrally important to the operations of the internet. The algorithm they came up with became known by their initials: RSA.
