For thousands of years, if you wanted to send a secret message, there was basically one way to do it. You’d scramble the message using a special rule, known only to you and your intended audience.

Public-key encryption, as noted in the profile of cryptographer Bruce Schneier, is complicated in detail but simple in outline. The article below is an outline of the principles of the most common ...

In the context of cryptography, a public key is an alphanumeric string that serves as an essential component of asymmetric encryption algorithms. It is typically derived from a private key, which must ...