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Asymmetric encryption expands on symmetric encryption by incorporating two different types of keys into the encryption method: private and public keys. [20] A public key can be accessed by anyone and is unique to one user whereas a private key is a secret key that is unique to and only known by one user. [21]
Public-key encryption was first described in a secret document in 1973; [14] beforehand, all encryption schemes were symmetric-key (also called private-key). [15]: 478 Although published subsequently, the work of Diffie and Hellman was published in a journal with a large readership, and the value of the methodology was explicitly described. [16]
Asymmetric keys differ from symmetric keys in that the algorithms use separate keys for encryption and decryption, while a symmetric key’s algorithm uses a single key for both processes. Because multiple keys are used with an asymmetric algorithm, the process takes longer to produce than a symmetric key algorithm would.
Symmetric-key cryptography, where a single key is used for both encryption and decryption. Symmetric-key cryptography refers to encryption methods in which both the sender and receiver share the same key (or, less commonly, in which their keys are different, but related in an easily computable way).
Because asymmetric key algorithms are nearly always much more computationally intensive than symmetric ones, it is common to use a public/private asymmetric key-exchange algorithm to encrypt and exchange a symmetric key, which is then used by symmetric-key cryptography to transmit data using the now-shared symmetric key for a symmetric key ...
Symmetric-key encryption: the same key is used for both encryption and decryption. Symmetric-key algorithms [a] are algorithms for cryptography that use the same cryptographic keys for both the encryption of plaintext and the decryption of ciphertext. The keys may be identical, or there may be a simple transformation to go between the two keys. [1]
56-bit refers to the size of a symmetric key used to encrypt data, with the number of unique possible permutations being (72,057,594,037,927,936). 56-bit encryption has its roots in DES , which was the official standard of the US National Bureau of Standards from 1976, and later also the RC5 algorithm.
The shared secret can be used, for instance, as the key for a symmetric cipher. If the sender and receiver wish to exchange encrypted messages, each must be equipped to encrypt messages to be sent and decrypt messages received. The nature of the equipping they require depends on the encryption technique they might use.