keys (public, private)

[dinesh pande]

Can someone please throw light on what are public and private keys and which of the security specs is responsible for generating what type of keys and how they are used.

Thanks in advance.

- KK

[Nicholas Cheung]

Can someone please throw light on what are public and private keys

Public key and private key are a key pair that can perform operation and unopearation.

For example,
C = f(Kpub, M) and M = f(Kpri, C), where
Kpub is the public key
Kpri is the private key
M is the original message
C is the encrypted form of M

One assumption is that, given M, C, and either Kpri or Kpub, you still cannot deduce another key, as f() is usually un-reversible.

which of the security specs is responsible for generating what type of keys and how they are used.

For public key spec, please read X.509 v3.
For private key spec, please read PKCS #8.

HTH

Nick

Thanks in advance.

- KK[/QB]