SAN FRANCISCO – The annual Cryptographers' Panel at the RSA Conference is part state of the union on cryptography and security, and part homage to the pioneers of encryption. It can be a dizzying discussion on hash functions and broken encryption algorithms; a nirvana for nerds. But this year, however, the Shamirs, Rivests and Diffies and Hellmans of the cryptoworld were joined on stage by the National Security Agency, making for a bit of good natured contention as well.

NSA, cryptoexperts jab at RSA Conference Cryptographers' Panel