Which Type of Cryptography Is Also Called Public Key Cryptography
By
Safeheron Team
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The type of cryptography that is also called public key cryptography is asymmetric cryptography. Here’s a brief explanation:
1. Basic concept of asymmetric cryptography
- In asymmetric cryptography, there are two different but mathematically related keys: a public key and a private key. The public key can be shared openly with anyone, while the private key is kept secret by its owner.
- For example, in the process of encryption, the sender uses the recipient’s public key to encrypt the message. The recipient then uses their own private key to decrypt the message. This is different from symmetric cryptography, where the same key is used for both encryption and decryption.
2. Common algorithms
- RSA (Rivest – Shamir – Adleman) is one of the most widely used public key cryptosystems. It is based on the mathematical properties of large prime numbers. The security of RSA relies on the difficulty of factoring the product of two large prime numbers.
- Another example is the Elliptic – Curve Cryptography (ECC). ECC is based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields. It can provide the same level of security as RSA with smaller key sizes, which makes it more efficient for some applications such as in mobile devices and embedded systems.
Public key cryptography is widely used in various applications such as secure communications over the Internet (e.g., HTTPS), digital signatures to verify the authenticity of messages, and secure key exchange protocols.
