Public-key cryptography - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography

Public-key cryptography
Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is
the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related
keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a
corresponding private key.[1][2] Key pairs are generated with
cryptographic algorithms based on mathematical problems
termed one-way functions. Security of public-key
cryptography depends on keeping the private key secret; the
public key can be openly distributed without compromising
security.[3]

In a public-key encryption system, anyone with a public key

can encrypt a message, yielding a ciphertext, but only those
who know the corresponding private key can decrypt the
ciphertext to obtain the original message.[4]
An unpredictable (typically large and
For example, a journalist can publish the public key of an random) number is used to begin
encryption key pair on a web site so that sources can send generation of an acceptable pair of
secret messages to the news organization in ciphertext. Only keys suitable for use by an asymmetric
the journalist who knows the corresponding private key can key algorithm.
decrypt the ciphertexts to obtain the sources' messages—an
eavesdropper reading email on its way to the journalist cannot
decrypt the ciphertexts. However, public-key encryption does
not conceal metadata like what computer a source used to
send a message, when they sent it, or how long it is. Public-
key encryption on its own also does not tell the recipient
anything about who sent a message—it just conceals the
content of a message in a ciphertext that can only be
decrypted with the private key.

In a digital signature system, a sender can use a private key

together with a message to create a signature. Anyone with
the corresponding public key can verify whether the signature
matches the message, but a forger who does not know the
private key cannot find any message/signature pair that will
pass verification with the public key.[5][6] In an asymmetric key encryption
scheme, anyone can encrypt
For example, a software publisher can create a signature key messages using a public key, but only
pair and include the public key in software installed on the holder of the paired private key
computers. Later, the publisher can distribute an update to the can decrypt such a message. The
software signed using the private key, and any computer security of the system depends on the
receiving an update can confirm it is genuine by verifying the secrecy of the private key, which must
signature using the public key. As long as the software not become known to any other.
publisher keeps the private key secret, even if a forger can
distribute malicious updates to computers, they cannot convince the computers that any malicious updates
are genuine.

Public key algorithms are fundamental security primitives in modern cryptosystems, including

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applications and protocols which offer assurance of the

confidentiality, authenticity and non-repudiability of
electronic communications and data storage. They underpin
numerous Internet standards, such as Transport Layer Security
(TLS), SSH, S/MIME and PGP. Some public key algorithms
provide key distribution and secrecy (e.g., Diffie–Hellman key
exchange), some provide digital signatures (e.g., Digital
Signature Algorithm), and some provide both (e.g., RSA).
Compared to symmetric encryption, asymmetric encryption is
rather slower than good symmetric encryption, too slow for
many purposes.[7] Today's cryptosystems (such as TLS,
Secure Shell) use both symmetric encryption and asymmetric
encryption, often by using asymmetric encryption to securely
exchange a secret key which is then used for symmetric
encryption.
In the Diffie–Hellman key exchange
Description scheme, each party generates a
public/private key pair and distributes
the public key of the pair. After
Before the mid-1970s, all cipher systems used symmetric key
obtaining an authentic (n.b., this is
algorithms, in which the same cryptographic key is used with
critical) copy of each other's public
the underlying algorithm by both the sender and the recipient,
keys, Alice and Bob can compute a
who must both keep it secret. Of necessity, the key in every
shared secret offline. The shared
such system had to be exchanged between the communicating
secret can be used, for instance, as the
parties in some secure way prior to any use of the system – for
key for a symmetric cipher which will
instance, via a secure channel. This requirement is never be, in essentially all cases, much faster.
trivial and very rapidly becomes unmanageable as the number
of participants increases, or when secure channels are not
available, or when, (as is sensible cryptographic practice),
keys are frequently changed. In particular, if messages are
meant to be secure from other users, a separate key is required
for each possible pair of users.

By contrast, in a public key system, the public keys can be

disseminated widely and openly, and only the corresponding
private keys need be kept secret by its owner.

Two of the best-known uses of public key cryptography are:

▪ Public key encryption, in which a message is

encrypted with the intended recipient's public
key. For properly chosen and used algorithms, In this example the message is
messages cannot in practice be decrypted by digitally signed with Alice's private key,
anyone who does not possess the matching but the message itself is not
encrypted. 1) Alice signs a message
private key, who is thus presumed to be the
with her private key. 2) Using Alice's
owner of that key and so the person associated public key, Bob can verify that Alice
with the public key. This can be used to ensure sent the message and that the
confidentiality of a message.[8] message has not been modified.
▪ Digital signatures, in which a message is signed
with the sender's private key and can be verified
by anyone who has access to the sender's public key.[9] This verification proves that the
sender had access to the private key, and therefore is very likely to be the person

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associated with the public key. It also proves that the signature was prepared for that
exact message, since verification will fail for any other message one could devise
without using the private key.

One important issue is confidence/proof that a particular public key is authentic, i.e. that it is correct and
belongs to the person or entity claimed, and has not been tampered with or replaced by some (perhaps
malicious) third party. There are several possible approaches, including:

A public key infrastructure (PKI), in which one or more third parties – known as certificate authorities –
certify ownership of key pairs. TLS relies upon this. This implies that the PKI system (software,
hardware, and management) is trust-able by all involved.

A "web of trust" which decentralizes authentication by using individual endorsements of links between a
user and the public key belonging to that user. PGP uses this approach, in addition to lookup in the
domain name system (DNS). The DKIM system for digitally signing emails also uses this approach.

Applications
The most obvious application of a public key encryption system is for encrypting communication to
provide confidentiality – a message that a sender encrypts using the recipient's public key which can be
decrypted only by the recipient's paired private key.

Another application in public key cryptography is the digital signature. Digital signature schemes can be
used for sender authentication.

Non-repudiation systems use digital signatures to ensure that one party cannot successfully dispute its
authorship of a document or communication.

Further applications built on this foundation include: digital cash, password-authenticated key agreement,
time-stamping services and non-repudiation protocols.

Hybrid cryptosystems
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 encryption algorithm. PGP, SSH, and the SSL/TLS family
of schemes use this procedure; they are thus called hybrid cryptosystems. The initial asymmetric
cryptography-based key exchange to share a server-generated symmetric key from the server to client has
the advantage of not requiring that a symmetric key be pre-shared manually, such as on printed paper or
discs transported by a courier, while providing the higher data throughput of symmetric key cryptography
over asymmetric key cryptography for the remainder of the shared connection.

Weaknesses
As with all security-related systems, it is important to identify potential weaknesses. Aside from poor
choice of an asymmetric key algorithm (there are few which are widely regarded as satisfactory) or too
short a key length, the chief security risk is that the private key of a pair becomes known. All security of
messages, authentication, etc., will then be lost.

Additionally, with the advent of quantum computing, many asymmetric key algorithms are considered
vulnerable to attacks, and new quantum-resistant schemes are being developed to overcome the

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problem.[10]

Algorithms
All public key schemes are in theory susceptible to a "brute-force key search attack".[11] However, such an
attack is impractical if the amount of computation needed to succeed – termed the "work factor" by
Claude Shannon – is out of reach of all potential attackers. In many cases, the work factor can be
increased by simply choosing a longer key. But other algorithms may inherently have much lower work
factors, making resistance to a brute-force attack (e.g., from longer keys) irrelevant. Some special and
specific algorithms have been developed to aid in attacking some public key encryption algorithms; both
RSA and ElGamal encryption have known attacks that are much faster than the brute-force approach.[12]
None of these are sufficiently improved to be actually practical, however.

Major weaknesses have been found for several formerly promising asymmetric key algorithms. The
"knapsack packing" algorithm was found to be insecure after the development of a new attack.[13] As with
all cryptographic functions, public-key implementations may be vulnerable to side-channel attacks that
exploit information leakage to simplify the search for a secret key. These are often independent of the
algorithm being used. Research is underway to both discover, and to protect against, new attacks.

Alteration of public keys

Another potential security vulnerability in using asymmetric keys is the possibility of a "man-in-the-
middle" attack, in which the communication of public keys is intercepted by a third party (the "man in the
middle") and then modified to provide different public keys instead. Encrypted messages and responses
must, in all instances, be intercepted, decrypted, and re-encrypted by the attacker using the correct public
keys for the different communication segments so as to avoid suspicion.

A communication is said to be insecure where data is transmitted in a manner that allows for interception
(also called "sniffing"). These terms refer to reading the sender's private data in its entirety. A
communication is particularly unsafe when interceptions can not be prevented or monitored by the
sender.[14]

A man-in-the-middle attack can be difficult to implement due to the complexities of modern security
protocols. However, the task becomes simpler when a sender is using insecure media such as public
networks, the Internet, or wireless communication. In these cases an attacker can compromise the
communications infrastructure rather than the data itself. A hypothetical malicious staff member at an
Internet Service Provider (ISP) might find a man-in-the-middle attack relatively straightforward.
Capturing the public key would only require searching for the key as it gets sent through the ISP's
communications hardware; in properly implemented asymmetric key schemes, this is not a significant
risk.

In some advanced man-in-the-middle attacks, one side of the communication will see the original data
while the other will receive a malicious variant. Asymmetric man-in-the-middle attacks can prevent users
from realizing their connection is compromised. This remains so even when one user's data is known to
be compromised because the data appears fine to the other user. This can lead to confusing disagreements
between users such as "it must be on your end!" when neither user is at fault. Hence, man-in-the-middle
attacks are only fully preventable when the communications infrastructure is physically controlled by one
or both parties; such as via a wired route inside the sender's own building. In summation, public keys are
easier to alter when the communications hardware used by a sender is controlled by an attacker.[15][16][17]

Public key infrastructure

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One approach to prevent such attacks involves the use of a public key infrastructure (PKI); a set of roles,
policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and
manage public-key encryption. However, this has potential weaknesses.

For example, the certificate authority issuing the certificate must be trusted by all participating parties to
have properly checked the identity of the key-holder, to have ensured the correctness of the public key
when it issues a certificate, to be secure from computer piracy, and to have made arrangements with all
participants to check all their certificates before protected communications can begin. Web browsers, for
instance, are supplied with a long list of "self-signed identity certificates" from PKI providers – these are
used to check the bona fides of the certificate authority and then, in a second step, the certificates of
potential communicators. An attacker who could subvert one of those certificate authorities into issuing a
certificate for a bogus public key could then mount a "man-in-the-middle" attack as easily as if the
certificate scheme were not used at all. In an alternative scenario rarely discussed, an attacker who
penetrates an authority's servers and obtains its store of certificates and keys (public and private) would be
able to spoof, masquerade, decrypt, and forge transactions without limit.

Despite its theoretical and potential problems, this approach is widely used. Examples include TLS and its
predecessor SSL, which are commonly used to provide security for web browser transactions (for
example, to securely send credit card details to an online store).

Aside from the resistance to attack of a particular key pair, the security of the certification hierarchy must
be considered when deploying public key systems. Some certificate authority – usually a purpose-built
program running on a server computer – vouches for the identities assigned to specific private keys by
producing a digital certificate. Public key digital certificates are typically valid for several years at a time,
so the associated private keys must be held securely over that time. When a private key used for certificate
creation higher in the PKI server hierarchy is compromised, or accidentally disclosed, then a "man-in-the-
middle attack" is possible, making any subordinate certificate wholly insecure.

Examples
Examples of well-regarded asymmetric key techniques for varied purposes include:

▪ Diffie–Hellman key exchange protocol

▪ DSS (Digital Signature Standard), which incorporates the Digital Signature Algorithm
▪ ElGamal
▪ Elliptic-curve cryptography

▪ Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)

▪ Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH)
▪ Ed25519 and Ed448 (EdDSA)
▪ X25519 and X448 (ECDH/EdDH)
▪ Various password-authenticated key agreement techniques
▪ Paillier cryptosystem
▪ RSA encryption algorithm (PKCS#1)
▪ Cramer–Shoup cryptosystem
▪ YAK authenticated key agreement protocol

Examples of asymmetric key algorithms not yet widely adopted include:

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▪ NTRUEncrypt cryptosystem
▪ Kyber
▪ McEliece cryptosystem

Examples of notable – yet insecure – asymmetric key algorithms include:

▪ Merkle–Hellman knapsack cryptosystem

Examples of protocols using asymmetric key algorithms include:

▪ S/MIME
▪ GPG, an implementation of OpenPGP, and an Internet Standard
▪ EMV, EMV Certificate Authority
▪ IPsec
▪ PGP
▪ ZRTP, a secure VoIP protocol
▪ Transport Layer Security standardized by IETF and its predecessor Secure Socket Layer
▪ SILC
▪ SSH
▪ Bitcoin
▪ Off-the-Record Messaging

History
During the early history of cryptography, two parties would rely upon a key that they would exchange by
means of a secure, but non-cryptographic, method such as a face-to-face meeting, or a trusted courier.
This key, which both parties must then keep absolutely secret, could then be used to exchange encrypted
messages. A number of significant practical difficulties arise with this approach to distributing keys.

Anticipation
In his 1874 book The Principles of Science, William Stanley Jevons[18] wrote:

Can the reader say what two numbers multiplied together will produce the number
8616460799?[19] I think it unlikely that anyone but myself will ever know.[20]

Here he described the relationship of one-way functions to cryptography, and went on to discuss
specifically the factorization problem used to create a trapdoor function. In July 1996, mathematician
Solomon W. Golomb said: "Jevons anticipated a key feature of the RSA Algorithm for public key
cryptography, although he certainly did not invent the concept of public key cryptography."[21]

Classified discovery
In 1970, James H. Ellis, a British cryptographer at the UK Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ), conceived of the possibility of "non-secret encryption", (now called public key cryptography),

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but could see no way to implement it.[22][23] In 1973, his colleague Clifford Cocks implemented what has
become known as the RSA encryption algorithm, giving a practical method of "non-secret encryption",
and in 1974 another GCHQ mathematician and cryptographer, Malcolm J. Williamson, developed what is
now known as Diffie–Hellman key exchange. The scheme was also passed to the US's National Security
Agency.[24] Both organisations had a military focus and only limited computing power was available in
any case; the potential of public key cryptography remained unrealised by either organization:

I judged it most important for military use ... if you can share your key rapidly and
electronically, you have a major advantage over your opponent. Only at the end of the
evolution from Berners-Lee designing an open internet architecture for CERN, its adaptation
and adoption for the Arpanet ... did public key cryptography realise its full potential.

—Ralph Benjamin[24]

These discoveries were not publicly acknowledged for 27 years, until the research was declassified by the
British government in 1997.[25]

Public discovery
In 1976, an asymmetric key cryptosystem was published by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman who,
influenced by Ralph Merkle's work on public key distribution, disclosed a method of public key
agreement. This method of key exchange, which uses exponentiation in a finite field, came to be known as
Diffie–Hellman key exchange.[26] This was the first published practical method for establishing a shared
secret-key over an authenticated (but not confidential) communications channel without using a prior
shared secret. Merkle's "public key-agreement technique" became known as Merkle's Puzzles, and was
invented in 1974 and only published in 1978. This makes asymmetric encryption a rather new field in
cryptography although cryptography itself dates back more than 2,000 years.[27]

In 1977, a generalization of Cocks' scheme was independently invented by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and
Leonard Adleman, all then at MIT. The latter authors published their work in 1978 in Martin Gardner's
Scientific American column, and the algorithm came to be known as RSA, from their initials.[28] RSA
uses exponentiation modulo a product of two very large primes, to encrypt and decrypt, performing both
public key encryption and public key digital signatures. Its security is connected to the extreme difficulty
of factoring large integers, a problem for which there is no known efficient general technique (though
prime factorization may be obtained through brute-force attacks; this grows much more difficult the larger
the prime factors are). A description of the algorithm was published in the Mathematical Games column
in the August 1977 issue of Scientific American.[29]

Since the 1970s, a large number and variety of encryption, digital signature, key agreement, and other
techniques have been developed, including the Rabin cryptosystem, ElGamal encryption, DSA and ECC.

See also
▪ Books on cryptography ▪ PGP word list
▪ GNU Privacy Guard ▪ Post-quantum cryptography
▪ Identity-based encryption (IBE) ▪ Pretty Good Privacy
▪ Key escrow ▪ Pseudonym
▪ Key-agreement protocol ▪ Public key fingerprint

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▪ Public key infrastructure (PKI) ▪ Symmetric-key algorithm

▪ Quantum computing ▪ Threshold cryptosystem
▪ Quantum cryptography ▪ Web of trust
▪ Secure Shell (SSH)

Notes
1. R. Shirey (August 2007). Internet Security Glossary, Version 2 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/
doc/html/rfc4949). Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC4949 (https://doi.org/10.
17487%2FRFC4949). RFC 4949 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4949).
Informational.
2. Bernstein, Daniel J.; Lange, Tanja (14 September 2017). "Post-quantum cryptography"
(http://www.nature.com/articles/nature23461). Nature. 549 (7671): 188–194.
Bibcode:2017Natur.549..188B (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017Natur.549..188B)
. doi:10.1038/nature23461 (https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature23461). ISSN 0028-0836
(https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0028-0836). PMID 28905891 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/28905891). S2CID 4446249 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:4446249)
.
3. Stallings, William (3 May 1990). Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and
Practice (https://books.google.com/books?id=Dam9zrViJjEC). Prentice Hall. p. 165.
ISBN 9780138690175.
4. Menezes, Alfred J.; van Oorschot, Paul C.; Vanstone, Scott A. (October 1996). "8: Public-
key encryption". Handbook of Applied Cryptography (https://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/hac/about
/chap8.pdf) (PDF). CRC Press. pp. 283–319. ISBN 0-8493-8523-7. Retrieved 8 October
2022.
5. Menezes, Alfred J.; van Oorschot, Paul C.; Vanstone, Scott A. (October 1996). "8: Public-
key encryption". Handbook of Applied Cryptography (https://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/hac/about
/chap11.pdf) (PDF). CRC Press. pp. 425–488. ISBN 0-8493-8523-7. Retrieved 8 October
2022.
6. Bernstein, Daniel J. (1 May 2008). "Protecting communications against forgery".
Algorithmic Number Theory (https://cr.yp.to/antiforgery/forgery-20080501.pdf) (PDF).
Vol. 44. MSRI Publications. §5: Public-key signatures, pp. 543-545. Retrieved 8 October
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7. Alvarez, Rafael; Caballero-Gil, Cándido; Santonja, Juan; Zamora, Antonio (27 June 2017).
"Algorithms for Lightweight Key Exchange" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles
/PMC5551094). Sensors. 17 (7): 1517. doi:10.3390/s17071517 (https://doi.org/10.3390%
2Fs17071517). ISSN 1424-8220 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1424-8220).
PMC 5551094 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5551094).
PMID 28654006 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28654006).
8. "Asymmetric encryption" (https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/security/public-k
ey-encryption/). IONOS Digitalguide. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
9. Mihir, Bellare; Goldwasser, Shafi. "Chapter 10: Digital signatures" (https://cseweb.ucsd.
edu/~mihir/papers/gb.pdf#page=168) (PDF). Lecture Notes on Cryptography.
10. Escribano Pablos, José Ignacio; González Vasco, María Isabel (April 2023). "Secure post‐
quantum group key exchange: Implementing a solution based on Kyber" (https://ietres
earch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1049/cmu2.12561). IET Communications. 17 (6):
758–773. doi:10.1049/cmu2.12561 (https://doi.org/10.1049%2Fcmu2.12561).
hdl:10016/37141 (https://hdl.handle.net/10016%2F37141). ISSN 1751-8628 (https://ww
w.worldcat.org/issn/1751-8628). S2CID 255650398 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/Cor
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11. Paar, Christof; Pelzl, Jan; Preneel, Bart (2010). Understanding Cryptography: A Textbook
for Students and Practitioners (http://www.crypto-textbook.com). Springer.
ISBN 978-3-642-04100-6.
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Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 31 March 2018
13. Shamir, Adi (November 1982). "A polynomial time algorithm for breaking the basic
Merkle-Hellman cryptosystem" (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4568386). 23rd
Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (SFCS 1982): 145–152.
doi:10.1109/SFCS.1982.5 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2FSFCS.1982.5).
14. Tunggal, Abi (20 February 2020). "What Is a Man-in-the-Middle Attack and How Can It
Be Prevented - What is the difference between a man-in-the-middle attack and
sniffing?" (https://www.upguard.com/blog/man-in-the-middle-attack#mitm-sniffing).
UpGuard. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
15. Tunggal, Abi (20 February 2020). "What Is a Man-in-the-Middle Attack and How Can It
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18. Jevons, William Stanley, The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method
(https://archive.org/stream/principlesofscie00jevorich#page/n166/mode/1up) p. 141,
Macmillan & Co., London, 1874, 2nd ed. 1877, 3rd ed. 1879. Reprinted with a foreword
by Ernst Nagel, Dover Publications, New York, NY, 1958.
19. This came to be known as "Jevons's number". The only nontrivial factor pair is 89681 ×
96079.
20. Principles of Science (https://archive.org/stream/principlesofscie00jevorich#page/n165/
mode/2up), Macmillan & Co., 1874, p. 141.
21. Golob, Solomon W. (1996). "On Factoring Jevons' Number" (https://semanticscholar.org
/paper/0b3e9a0c0e8bf84413f49d3a4585c207f58da70e). Cryptologia. 20 (3): 243.
doi:10.1080/0161-119691884933 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F0161-119691884933).
S2CID 205488749 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:205488749).
22. Ellis, James H. (January 1970). "THE POSSIBILITY OF SECURE NON-SECRET DIGITAL
ENCRYPTION" (https://cryptocellar.org/cesg/possnse.pdf) (PDF).
23. Sawer, Patrick (11 March 2016). "The unsung genius who secured Britain's computer
defences and paved the way for safe online shopping" (https://www.newindianexpress.
com/world/2016/mar/12/The-Anonymous-Researcher-Who-Held-the-Key-to-Cyber-Sec
urity-910751.html). The Telegraph.
24. Espiner, Tom (26 October 2010). "GCHQ pioneers on birth of public key crypto" (https://
www.zdnet.com/article/gchq-pioneers-on-birth-of-public-key-crypto/). www.zdnet.com.
25. Singh, Simon (1999). The Code Book. Doubleday. pp. 279 (https://archive.org/details/cod
ebookevolutio00sing/page/279)–292.

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26. Diffie, Whitfield; Hellman, Martin E. (November 1976). "New Directions in

Cryptography" (https://ee.stanford.edu/%7Ehellman/publications/24.pdf) (PDF). IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory. 22 (6): 644–654. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.37.9720 (https://cit
eseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.37.9720).
doi:10.1109/TIT.1976.1055638 (https://doi.org/10.1109%2FTIT.1976.1055638). Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20141129035850/https://ee.stanford.edu/%7Ehellman/p
ublications/24.pdf) (PDF) from the original on 29 November 2014.
27. "Asymmetric encryption" (https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/security/public-k
ey-encryption/). IONOS Digitalguide. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
28. Rivest, R.; Shamir, A.; Adleman, L. (February 1978). "A Method for Obtaining Digital
Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems" (http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Rsapaper.
pdf) (PDF). Communications of the ACM. 21 (2): 120–126. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.607.2677 (http
s://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.607.2677).
doi:10.1145/359340.359342 (https://doi.org/10.1145%2F359340.359342).
S2CID 2873616 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:2873616).
29. Robinson, Sara (June 2003). "Still Guarding Secrets after Years of Attacks, RSA Earns
Accolades for its Founders" (http://www.msri.org/people/members/sara/articles/rsa.pd
f) (PDF). SIAM News. 36 (5).

References
▪ Hirsch, Frederick J. "SSL/TLS Strong Encryption: An Introduction" (http://httpd.apache.o
rg/docs/2.2/ssl/ssl_intro.html#cryptographictech). Apache HTTP Server. Retrieved
17 April 2013.. The first two sections contain a very good introduction to public-key
cryptography.
▪ Ferguson, Niels; Schneier, Bruce (2003). Practical Cryptography. Wiley.
ISBN 0-471-22357-3.
▪ Katz, Jon; Lindell, Y. (2007). Introduction to Modern Cryptography (https://archive.org/det
ails/Introduction_to_Modern_Cryptography). CRC Press. ISBN 978-1-58488-551-1.
▪ Menezes, A. J.; van Oorschot, P. C.; Vanstone, Scott A. (1997). Handbook of Applied
Cryptography (https://archive.org/details/handbookofapplie0000mene). Taylor &
Francis. ISBN 0-8493-8523-7.
▪ IEEE 1363: Standard Specifications for Public-Key Cryptography (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20081119061833/http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1363/)
▪ Christof Paar, Jan Pelzl, "Introduction to Public-Key Cryptography" (https://archive.toda
y/20121208212741/http://wiki.crypto.rub.de/Buch/movies.php), Chapter 6 of
"Understanding Cryptography, A Textbook for Students and Practitioners". (companion
web site contains online cryptography course that covers public-key cryptography),
Springer, 2009.
▪ Salomaa, Arto (1996). Public-Key Cryptography (2 ed.). Berlin: Springer. 275.
doi:10.1007/978-3-662-03269-5 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-3-662-03269-5).
ISBN 978-3-662-03269-5. S2CID 24751345 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:24
751345).

External links
▪ Oral history interview with Martin Hellman (http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299
/107353), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Leading cryptography
scholar Martin Hellman discusses the circumstances and fundamental insights of his
invention of public key cryptography with collaborators Whitfield Diffie and Ralph

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Merkle at Stanford University in the mid-1970s.

▪ An account of how GCHQ kept their invention of PKE secret until 1997 (https://web.arc
hive.org/web/20080625052129/http://www.ladlass.com/intel/archives/010256.html)

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