Public Key Cryptography

Public Key Cryptography is a system of cryptography using two sets of keys: private and public.
It can be used in the following ways:
For Secure Communications

• The reciever's public key can be used to encrypt a message
• The message can only be decrypted using the reciever's private key

For Digital Signatures

• The private key can be used to sign a message
• The public key can be used to verify that the message was actually signed using the private key

Types of authentication protocols

• GPG (GNU Privacy Guard) Keys
• SSH (Secure SHell) Keys
• X.509 Certificates issued by CA for S/MIME Authentication

Digital signature algorithms

• DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm)
• RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman)
• ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm)

Tags:
cryptography