Public key cryptography is a method to encrypt messages using a nonsecret key. The term public key cryptography also includes various others cryptographic methods using a nonsecret key, such as authentication, digital signature schemes, and key agreement. Here we describe public key encryption schemes.
Conventional cryptography, also known as symmetric cryptosystem, uses a secret key to encrypt messages; the same key is required to decrypt these messages. In a public key encryption scheme however, knowledge of the key used to encrypt messages (which we call encryption keyin the sequel) does not allow one to derive the key to decrypt the messages. Therefore an encryption key can be made public without endangering the security of the decryption key. A pair of encryption key and decryption key is generated for each receiver, and all the encryption keys are published. When sending a secret message to a receiver, the sender picks the public encryption key of the receiver and encrypts the...
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© 2005 International Federation for Information Processing
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Sako, K. (2005). Public Key Cryptography. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_331
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_331
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-23473-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-23483-0
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