Algorithms for Public Key Cryptosystems: Theory and Application

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses recent advancements in cryptographic techniques, known as public key cryptography, which provides elegant solutions not only to secrecy and authentication, but also to protection against forgery through a provision called digital signatures. The chapter begins by introducing a few useful concepts, definitions, and notations. The process of transforming the message or plain text and locking its contents from being known to others is called encryption or enciphering. Decryption is the unlocking of the ciphered text to get back the original plain text. The locking and unlocking is done by a key, which is known only to the legitimate sender-receiver and the encryption-decryption pair constitutes a cryptosystem. Cryptography deals with the analysis and design of cryptosystems. The modern public-key cryptosystem uses different keys for the encryption and decryption process. The chapter presents various algorithms for public key cryptosystems and describes its various applications, such as authentication, digital signatures, read-only secure communications, conference key distribution systems, and data-base security.