Examples Of Public Key Encryption

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Public key encryption is one type of cryptographic mechanism that uses asymmetric key pair to encrypt and decrypt the message which means the key used to encrypt the message differs from the key used to decrypt one. It was first published by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman in the year 1976. A public-key encryption includes six main elements which are as follows- a. Plaintext: A message to be encrypted b. Encryption algorithm: The algorithm used to encrypt the message c. Public/shared key: This key is made public by the owner, so that others can use it to encrypt the message d. Private/secret key: This key is used to decrypt the message by the owner e. Cipher-text: This is the encrypted message f. Decryption algorithm: The algorithm used to decrypt the message Above figure depicts the general view of public key encryption process. It involves following steps- • The receiver generates asymmetric but related pair of public and private keys using mathematical function • The receiver issues public key to the sender and keep the private-key with himself in a secure place • Sender encrypts the plaintext message based on the encryption algorithm using receiver’s public key, generating the cipher-text and send it to the receiver • Receiver decrypts the cipher-text based on the decryption algorithm using his private-key, hence …show more content…

This means that one key-pair can achieve secure communication in one direction only and if receiver wants to securely reply to the sender, then sender have to generate another key pair and issue the public key to the receiver and keep private key with himself. Public key encryption is extended for communication among multiple users, by maintaining a public register or some other accessible file which contains the public keys of all the participating users and can be used by everyone to securely communicate with

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