On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 09:22:41 -0500, "Matt MacDonald" < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> Can someone please explain to me, in as few mathematical equations as > possible, why RSA public/private encryption works? The way it looks > to me > in the documentation that came with REBOL, you have to send the > recieving > party the public key. If this is the case, what stops some hacker > from > intercepting that public key and using it to decrypt the data? How > is this > any different from using a syncronous encryption method and then just > sending the encryption key along with the data? It just doesn't make > sense > to me. You misunderstood how it works. Let's suppose you (A) is trying to send an encrypted text to a friend (B): (A) gets the public key associated with (B). (A) encrypts the text to be sent using that key and send the encrypted text to (B). (B) will receive the encrypted text and uses his private key to decrypt it. Note it is not possible to decrypt the text with just the public key, so that's why a third person that somehow got the encrypted text would not be able to decrypt it without knowing the private key from (B). If all you want to do iss sign adocument, then you use your private lkey to sign it and anyway that knows your public key will be able to verify if the text was changed or something like that. -Bruno -- Fortune Cookie Says: Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.) -- To unsubscribe from this list, just send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the subject.
