This paper describes in general the design and working of the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman algorithm commonly known by the name RSA algorithm. It is a public key cryptosystem that makes use of a pair of keys, namely the public and the private key.
Public key cryptosystems were invented in the late 1970's, with some help from the development of complexity theory around that time. It was observed that based on a problem so difficult that it would need thousands of years to solve, and with some luck, a cryptosystem could be developed which would have two keys, a secret key and a public key. With the public key one could encrypt messages, and decrypt them with the private key. Thus the owner of the private key would be the only one who could decrypt the messages, but anyone knowing the public key could send them in privacy.
The RSA cryptosystem, named after its inventors R. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman, is the most widely used public-key cryptosystem. It may be used to provide both secrecy and digital signatures and its security is based on the intractability of the integer factorization problem.
This paper presents an insight into RSA and explorers its intricacies and its characteristics, which make it the most sought after asymmetric key algorithm till date.
Introduction:
Cryptography has been in practical use for a very long time. While it may well have been used previously, extant records indicate that the Spartans established the first system of military cryptography. As early as the fifth century B.C., they employed a device called the 'skytale' [which] consists of a staff of wood around which a strip of papyrus or leather or parchment is wrapped close-packed. The secret message is written on the parchment down the length of the staff; the parchment is then unwound and sent on its way.
The existence of cryptography from this early a time, proves that there was a need for data security from a very long time.
Cryptographic algorithms have been in existence from the time of Shakespeare (as mentioned in Julius Caesar). This is from where the Caesar algorithm gets its name from, wherein, a letter is encrypted by replacing it with a letter relative to its position in the alphabet.
With an increase in the need for securing the data, the level of complexity involved to get through to encrypted data also increased. Algorithms with
?keys? to encode and decode the data were developed.
Download your Full Reports for RSA Algorithm
Advertisement