Public Key Cryptography | Microschool Dev

Public key cryptography, also known as asymmetric cryptography, revolutionized secure communication by using a pair of keys: a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption. This system underpins much of modern digital security, from secure web browsing (SSL/TLS) to digital signatures and cryptocurrencies. Unlike symmetric cryptography, where both parties share a secret key, public key cryptography allows for secure key exchange and authentication without prior secret sharing. Its invention in the 1970s by Diffie, Hellman, and Merkle, and later by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman (RSA), marked a pivotal moment in information security, enabling trust in otherwise untrusted networks like the internet. The underlying mathematical problems, such as factoring large numbers or solving the discrete logarithm problem, provide the security, though advancements in quantum computing pose a future challenge.