Proof of a 15-Year Old Conjecture
In 1972, James Massey described an algorithm for multi-sequence shift register
synthesis which has important applications in cryptography and coding theory, and
conjectured that it solves the multi-sequence shift register synthesis problem. The
conjecture remained open until 1987. Fifteen years later in 1987, Cunsheng Ding proved
Massey's conjecture when he was a postgraduate. This became the core part of his M.Sc. thesis.
His paper was published in: Advances in Cryptology
- EUROCRYPT '88: Workshop on the Theory and Application of Cryptographic Techniques, Davos,
Switzerland, May 1988, LNCS 330, pp. 345 -- 349, Springer Verlag, 1988.
The algorithm was later called Massey-Ding algorithm
and was further generalized by others.