How Public Key Encryption Works

By Author: Tammy Zhou
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When you are entering your credit card number, talking with your lover, chatting with your business partners, can you imagine what will happen if everything you are doing is exposing to everybody?

Yes, it is unbelievable but it is quite true, hackers can easily obtain your private information like credit card number, email logs, chat logs etc. by using some network analytic tools, such as Colasoft packet sniffers.

Protect Your Email Secure And Safe So if we are helpless with our private information from being monitored or stolen? Of course not, to keep data sent via email private, you just need to encrypt it, as only unencrypted content can be monitored by network analytic tools like packet sniffer. Only the targeted recipient will be able to decipher the message.

How to Encrypt Your Message? Public key encryption is a special case of encryption, it operates using a combination of two keys: one is a private key, the other is a public key which together form a pair of keys. The private key is kept secret on your computer since it is used for decryption, the public key, which is used for encryption, is given ...
... to anybody who wants to send encrypted mail to you.

How public key works? When you send public-key encrypted mail, the sender's encryption program uses your public key in combination with the sender's private key to encipher the message. When you receive public-key encrypted mail, you need to decipher it.colasoft packet sniffer Decryption of a message enciphered with a public key can only be done with the matching private key. This is why the two keys form a pair, and it is also why it is so important to keep the private key safe and to make sure it never gets into the wrong hands (or in any hands other than yours).

Why the Integrity of the Public Key is Essential Another crucial point with public key encryption is the distribution of the public key. Public key encryption is only safe and secure if the sender of an enciphered message can be sure that the public key used for encryption belongs to the recipient. A third party can produce a public key with the recipient's name and give it to the sender, who uses the key to send important information in encrypted form. The enciphered message is intercepted by the third party, and since it was produced using their public key they have no problem deciphering it with their private key. This is why it is mandatory that a public key is either given to you personally or authorized by a certificate authority.