I can't help but speculate that the similarity in titles was an oblique reference to an earlier source.

#cryptography

Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, 1976
"New Directions in Cryptography"
https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf

Francis Bacon, 1620
"True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of Nature"
https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/bacon1620.pdf