Encryption changes plaintext into ciphertext for secure transmission. RSA encryption, invented by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, is a type of public key cryptography that uses a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption. PGP is a program that uses PKC and two keys for secure communication. In 2010, RSA encryption was claimed to have been cracked, but some argue that it was not the same as breaking encryption.
To transmit the message privately and secretly, an encryption and decryption process is used. Encryption changes the original message, called the plaintext, into ciphertext. Decryption turns the ciphertext back into plaintext so that the recipient of the message can read it. Encrypting messages transmitted over networks has become important, especially as more and more messages are transmitted over the Internet. RSA encryption is a type of encryption used in this process.
RSA encryption, also called Rivest-Shamir-Adleman encryption, was invented by Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard M. Adleman, who were all MIT faculty members in 1977 and invented the more commonly referred to encryption system to use only the first initial of each of their surnames. It was used in public key cryptography (PKC), which is also called public key cryptography system or, alternatively, asymmetric cryptography. There is a different kind of system called symmetric key cryptography.
Public key cryptography is a system freely available for use on the Internet through a program called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). PGP, designed by Phil Zimmerman in 1991 to help protect privacy, is available as freeware for some uses. The PKC system uses two keys: a public key and a private key. While the private key is known only to the user’s computer, the public key is shared by each user’s computer with other computers that want to communicate with it securely.
To send a message to another computer, the sender’s computer requests its public key and uses it to encrypt the message. When the recipient’s computer receives a message that has been encrypted with RSA encryption and your public key, it uses your private key to decrypt it. In other words, the public key is used for encryption and the private key is used for decryption. A message could be intercepted or hijacked by someone who wasn’t the intended recipient, but not decrypted and read.
In March of 2010, the University of Michigan reported a claim that RSA encryption had been cracked by three of its computer scientists. The method used caused a power fluctuation in a server. Some have argued that gaining access to a specially configured device and tampering with it is not the same as breaking encryption.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
