Niels T. Ferguson (born 10 December 1965, Eindhoven) is a Dutch cryptographer and consultant who currently works for Microsoft.
In 1999, Niels Ferguson, together with Bruce Schneier and John Kelsey, developed the Yarrow algorithm, a Cryptographically-Secure Pseudorandom Number Generator (CSPRNG).
In 2001, he claimed to have broken the HDCP system that is incorporated into HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs players, similar to the DVDs Content Scramble System, but has not published his research, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which would make such publication illegal.
In 2006 he published a paper covering some of his work around Bitlocker full disk encryption at Microsoft.
[1] At the CRYPTO 2007 conference rump session, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson presented an informal paper describing a potential kleptographic backdoor in the NIST specified Dual_EC_DRBG cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator.