In 1992, while working for AT&T, Blaze implemented a strong cryptographic package known as "CFS", the Cryptographic File System, for Unix, since ported to Linux.[6] CFS uses
Network File System as its transport mechanism, allowing users to encrypt selected directory hierarchies, but mount them unencrypted after providing the key. In November, 1993, he presented a paper on this project, "A Cryptographic File System for Unix", at the 1st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.[7] Blaze also published a paper "Key Management in an Encrypting File System", in the Proceedings USENIX Summer 1994 Technical Conference.
In the early 1990s, at the height of the "
crypto war", Blaze was a participant in the
Cypherpunks mailing list[8] and in 1994, he found a critical weakness in the wiretapping mechanisms of the
Clipper chip.[3]
His paper, Protocol Failure in the Escrowed Encryption Standard,[9] pointed out that the Clipper's escrow system had a serious vulnerability: a
brute-force attack could allow the Clipper chip to be used as an encryption device, while disabling the key escrow capability.[9][10][11] Later during this time, he was one of the authors of a seminal paper on calculating secure
key lengths.[12]
After leaving Bell, Blaze was an associate professor of computer and information science at the
University of Pennsylvania[13] from 2004 to 2018.[2] Blaze has noted a long-term conflict with the university's locksmith over his master key & safecracking publications.[14] He then joined the faculty at Georgetown University, on a joint appointment at
Georgetown Law and the department of computer science.
In July 2016, the complete board of the
Tor Project resigned and announced a new board, including Matt Blaze.[16][17]
In 2018, crypto Visa card company Monaco paid Blaze an undisclosed amount for the rights to the domain
Crypto.com.[18] Blaze had registered the domain in 1993 and sellers have estimated that the value of the domain was US$5–10 million.[19]
Education
Ph.D., Computer Science, January 1993. Princeton University. (Dissertation: Caching in Large-Scale Distributed File Systems)
M.A., Computer Science, June 1989. Princeton University
Bellovin, Steven M.; Blaze, Matt; Landau, Susan; Owsley, Brian L. Seeking the Source: Criminal Defendants’ Constitutional Right to Source Code in Ohio State Technology Law Journal Volume 17.1, pages 1–73. December 2020.
^Rodger, Will (30 November 2001).
"Cypherpunks RIP". The Register. Retrieved 14 July 2016. Past participants include noted cryptographers such as Matt Blaze ...