# The Story Behind RSA: The Invention That Secured the Internet (ft. Turing Award Winner Ron Rivest)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/a16z-crypto-show-5434524/the-story-behind-rsa-the-invention-that-secured-the-internet-ft-turing-award-winner-ron-rivest
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/a16z-crypto-show-5434524/the-story-behind-rsa-the-invention-that-secured-the-internet-ft-turing-award-winner-ron-rivest.md
Podcast: [a16z crypto show](https://stenobird.com/podcast/a16z-crypto-show-5434524)
Published: 2026-07-24T16:13:56+00:00
Episode link: https://web3-with-a16z.simplecast.com/episodes/first-principles-ron-rivest-qooWB9Yg
Audio file: https://mgln.ai/e/1344/afp-848985-injected.calisto.simplecastaudio.com/bf52be5a-9faf-45fb-9bc3-bb4270ec53d9/episodes/25f3f42d-ece1-41a0-8acf-ce22e65c9769/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=bf52be5a-9faf-45fb-9bc3-bb4270ec53d9&awEpisodeId=25f3f42d-ece1-41a0-8acf-ce22e65c9769&feed=XPOpH7r4
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Duration seconds: 3284

## Resource

Before the internet could become a place to bank or transact, it needed a way for strangers to know who they were talking to, and whether a message could be trusted. Turing Award winners Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman helped invent it. In this episode of First Principles, Rivest tells the story of how they developed RSA, the first practical public-key cryptosystem. Their breakthrough made it possible to encrypt information, verify identities, and authenticate messages across an open network without requiring participants to meet or exchange a secret in advance — laying essential groundwork for the secure internet and, decades later, blockchains.

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## Transcript

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