Asymmetric Ciphers

• Key is split into private and public part
• Public key can not be used to derive private key
• Encryption is performed using the public key
• Decryption is performed using the private key
• The two operations can be combined to establish secrecy and sender authenticity
• Can be used to implement a digital signature
• Underlying mathematical operations
  • Factorization (factor a product of two primes)
  • Discrete logarithm (calculate the integer nth root of a number)
  • Elliptic curves
• Computationally expensive
• Typically used to establish common secret key

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 Last change: Friday, June 11, 2004 5:44 pm
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