/biz/ - Business & Finance

>Public Key Encryption
PKE is an asymetric cryptographic system which uses a related pair of public and private keys held by each user. The public key is distributed to the people you wish to communicate with, while the private key is held only by you!
To explain the process behind the Public Key encryption we will look at a simple one way message sent from User A to User B.
User A wants to send an encrypted message to User B.
User B sends User A his public key.
User A uses this public key to encrypt the message he wants to send to User B.
The message is then sent
User B uses his private key to decrypt the message.
In this way, we can see how anyone can encrypt a message for another person utilizing the recipients public key, but only the recipient who holds the private key is able to decrypt it.

>Message encryption
Lets take a slightly closer look at how this message is encrypted, including the symmetrical key
User A is encrypting a message to User B
The message is first compressed, this reduces workload and strengthens encryption.
A session key (symmetrical encryption) is generated and used to encrypt the compressed, plaintext message.
The session key is then encrypted using User B's public key.
The message is now encrypted and can be sent to the receiver.
User B decrypts the session key using their private key.
The session key is used to decrypt the message back to plaintext.

>Public Key Encryption
PKE is an asymetric cryptographic system which uses a related pair of public and private keys held by each user. The public key is distributed to the people you wish to communicate with, while the private key is held only by you!
To explain the process behind the Public Key encryption we will look at a simple one way message sent from User A to User B.
User A wants to send an encrypted message to User B.
User B sends User A his public key.
User A uses this public key to encrypt the message he wants to send to User B.
The message is then sent
User B uses his private key to decrypt the message.
In this way, we can see how anyone can encrypt a message for another person utilizing the recipients public key, but only the recipient who holds the private key is able to decrypt it.

>Message encryption
Lets take a slightly closer look at how this message is encrypted, including the symmetrical key
User A is encrypting a message to User B
The message is first compressed, this reduces workload and strengthens encryption.
A session key (symmetrical encryption) is generated and used to encrypt the compressed, plaintext message.
The session key is then encrypted using User B's public key.
The message is now encrypted and can be sent to the receiver.
User B decrypts the session key using their private key.
The session key is used to decrypt the message back to plaintext.