D. McGrew

D. McGrew authored RFC 5116, which specifies an interface for authenticated encryption with associated data. The RFC's author-address section identifies him as David A. McGrew. Its technical contribution is to make the inputs and outputs of encryption and authenticated decryption explicit, including the key, nonce, readable authenticated data, ciphertext and failure result.^[ref]

For example, a packet header can remain readable while being authenticated together with an encrypted payload. Changing that header must invalidate the result rather than silently attach the old payload to a different context. The RFC also separates an algorithm's nonce requirements from management of nonces by the surrounding cryptographic protocol. Reusing a key/nonce pair can violate a construction's assumptions even though the interface accepts values of the correct length.^[ref]