David R. Wallace

David R. Wallace (December 15, 1942 – March 2, 2012) was an American mathematician and inventor. He is known for the Wallace algorithm as well as “Software Cloaking”, a patented method for hiding the internal operations of computer programs.

Education and professional career

Wallace received degrees in mathematics from Columbia University (BA), University of California at Berkeley (MA) and a Ph.D in 1975 at Tulane University with his dissertation Permutation Groupoids and Circuit Bases: An Algebraic Resolution of Some Graph Structures.[1]

He was a professor at Emory University, DePauw and Boston University. He was Chief Software Architect for Alliant, Chief compiler architect at Sun Microsystems, and co-founder of Determina (now part of VMware).

Inventions

Wallace was the inventor of the Wallace algorithm, a method for determining the dependence between array references in scientific programs for the purpose of parallelization.[2]

He was also the inventor of “Software Cloaking”, a technology for preventing reverse engineering. This process is primarily used to prevent hackers from cracking DRM systems. Cloaking hides the internal operation of a program using mathematical transformations. His patent for this technology, “System and Method for Cloaking Software,” was granted by the USPTO in February, 2001.[3]

David R. Wallace had several patents pending for a new form of software security called 'Greencastle Vulnerability Shield'.

References

  1. ↑ Permutation Groupoids and Circuit Bases: An Algebraic Resolution of Some Graph Structures, 1975. Advised by Karl Hofmann.
  2. ↑
    • Wallace, David, "Dependence of Multi-Dimensional Array References," Proceedings of the International Conference on Supercomputing, July 1988, pp. 418–428.
  3. ↑ US Patent 6,192,475, USPTO, USA, 2001.