Asymmetric Cryptography
Learn what cryptographic keys are and how private and public keys work together to encrypt and decrypt messages.
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What is cryptography?
Cryptography is a technology used to safeguard information or communication against unauthorized access. The concept behind this technique is simple—cryptography uses mathematical algorithms to encrypt and decrypt data.
Encryption is the process of transforming readable data into unreadable data. This is done using an algorithm and a string of bytes (the key). Encrypted data is not understandable by anyone, the only way to access the data is by decrypting it.
Decryption is the inverse process of transforming encrypted data back into its original form.
There are two principal types of encryption:
Symmetric encryption is also known as private key encryption.
Asymmetric encryption is also known as public key encryption.
Symmetric encryption
This is the simplest kind of encryption because the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt data.
The key can be a number, a word, or a random string of letters and is “blended” with the input ...