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A type of key used to decode
encrypted messages, known only to the sender and recipient of a message.
Some encryption algorithms such as des rely on a single
private key, using the same string of characters to encode and decode a
message. this technique has some disadvantages, the main one being the
difficulty of exchanging the key between the sender and recipient and
figuring out how it should itself be encrypted. If the key is inadvertently
intercepted. Another problem is that every message must have its own unique
key, selected from (in the case of des) one of tens of quadrillions
of alternatives. Contrast with public key cryptography, in
which only two keys are ever needed (one public, one private) no matter how
many messages are generated. |
