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What are secret keys?
John Savill
April 6, 2000
1 Min Read
A. We have seen that public-key encryption is slow compared tosymmetric-key encryption and that public-key encryption is useful fordistributing a key between two parties which can then be used for symmetricencryption.
The exact workings for this are as follows:
Each side generates half of the key
They encrypt the half they generated with the other persons public key
Each side then sends their half to the other
As they receive the other half they decrypt with their private key so both parties now have both parts of the key and can now use symmetric-key encryption
While it would be possible for one side to generate the whole key thisdoubles the security as even if someone knew one parties private key they wouldonly have half the key.
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