Public Key Cryptography

A method to encrypt messages by using asymmetric encryption.

For this we need a key-pair, a private an a public key. Both keys are unique. Any private key can have only 1 public key and any public key can only be derived from 1 private key. You can not derive the private key from the public key.

A private key uniquely identifies an entity (person or computer), it should be kept private by that entity. Public keys can be shared in public enabling these use cases:

• Messages encrypted with the public key can only be decoded using the private key.
• Messages signed with the private key can only be decoded using the public key. A message signed with a private key can only be created by the owner of that private key.