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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 184–185Cite as

Asymmetric Encryption

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Synonyms

Public-key encryption

Definition

Asymmetric encryption, also known as public-key encryption, is a form of data encryption where the encryption key (also called the public key) and the corresponding decryption key (also called the private key) are different. A message encrypted with the public key can be decrypted only with the corresponding private key. The public key and the private key are related mathematically, but it is computationally infeasible to derive the private key from the public key. Therefore, a recipient could distribute the public key widely. Anyone can use the public key to encrypt messages for the recipient and only the recipient can decrypt them.

Key Points

A public-key encryption algorithm requires a trapdoor one-way function, i.e., a function that is easy to compute but hard to invert unless one knows some secret trapdoor (i.e., the private key). Existing public-key encryption algorithms are based on computational problems in number theory.

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Recommended Reading

  1. Diffie W, Hellman ME. New directions in cryptography. IEEE Trans Inf Theory. 1976;22(6):644–54.

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  2. El Gamal T. A public key cryptosystem and a signature scheme based on discrete logarithms. In: Advances in cryptology: proceedings of CRYPTO ‘84. LNCS; 1985. p. 10–8.

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  3. Rivest RL, Shamir A, Adleman LM. A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems. Commun ACM. 1978;21(2):120–6.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Ninghui Li

Authors
  1. Ninghui Li
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ninghui Li .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. DiSTA, Univ. of Insubria, Varese, Italy

    Elena Ferrari

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© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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Li, N. (2018). Asymmetric Encryption. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_1485

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