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c) What is secret key cryptography?

Digital Signature India
Secret-key cryptography is sometimes referred to as symmetric cryptography. It is the more traditional form of cryptography, in which a single key can be used to encrypt and decrypt a message. Secret-key cryptography not only deals with encryption, but it also deals with authentication.
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Public key vs. secret key: which cryptography system is better?

Digital Certificate Registration Center
A combination of both. The action of encrypting information with public-key cryptography is significantly slower than encrypting with a secret key. However the drawback of the secret-key system is that, secret keys must be transmitted either manually or through a communication channel, and there may be a chance that others can discover the secret keys during transmission. This is not a problem with public-key cryptography, as private keys never need to be transmitted or revealed to anyone.
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What is secret/symmetric cryptography?

Digital Certificate Registration Center
Secret key (symmetric/conventional) cryptography is a system based on the sender and receiver of a message knowing and using the same secret key to encrypt and decrypt their messages. One weakness of this system is that the sender and receiver must trust some communications channel to transmit the secret key to prevent from disclosure. Example: You use a strongbox to send a valuable gift to your friend, locking it with a key. No one can get to the gift without the key, including your friend.
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What is cryptology? Cryptography? Plaintext? Ciphertext? Encryption? Key?

Cryptography FAQs - WikiFAQ - Answers to Frequently Asked Qu...
The story begins: When Julius Caesar sent messages to his trusted acquaintances, he didn't trust the messengers. So he replaced every A by a D, every B by a E, and so on through the alphabet. Only someone who knew the ''shift by 3 rule could decipher his messages. A cryptosystem or cipher system is a method of disguising messages so that only certain people can see through the disguise. Cryptography is the art of creating and using cryptosystems.
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d) What is Public Key Cryptography?

Digital Signature India
Public Key Cryptography is a method for securely exchanging messages, based on assigning two complimentary keys (one public, one private) to the individuals involved in a transaction. Public Key Cryptography is based on the science of encryption, the mathematical scrambling and unscrambling of messages.
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Able Encryption Software. Safe Soft Corporation. Frequently ...
Public Key cryptography is an encryption method that uses two different but related keys: a public key which is used for encryption and the secret key (password) used to decrypt the data. It is best suited for the storage and/or exchange of private or confidential data between two or more parties.
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Assure Systems Products & Services
Public key cryptography is a remarkable solution to this last problem concerning key distribution. There are branches of mathematics, discovered by the scientists named above, that provide for two mathematically related keys where when one key is used to encrypt a message, then only the other one can decrypt the message. And, if only one key is known, it is infeasible for anyone to mathematically derive the other key.
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What is public/asymmetric key cryptography?

Digital Certificate Registration Center
Public key (asymmetric) cryptography is a system based on pairs of keys called public key and private key. The public key is published while the private key is kept secret with the owner. The need for a sender and a receiver to share a secret key and trust some communications channel is eliminated. This concept was introduced in 1976 by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman.
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What is the secret key?

CFXHosting - Advanced Hosting Solutions for Macromedia Devel...
The secret key is a special string of text that encrypts all the data that is stored on the server. This secret key can be changed at anytime between backups and restores. If the key is forgotten or lost, the backup server administrator may not be able to recover the data on the server so make sure you keep this information in a safe place.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The secret key is a special text string used to encrypt all data that is stored on the server. The secret key can be changed at any time in between backups or restores. If the secret key is forgotten or lost, the Backup Server administrator may not be able to recover the data on the server.
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What is Public Key Cryptography and how does it work?

Education Department - Commerce World
Public Key Cryptography or Asymmetric Cryptography forms the basis of digital signatures and Public Key Infrastructure. This technique makes use of a pair of mathematically related, but different keys - a private key and a public key. The private key is kept secret and is only accessible to its owner; the public key is intended for wide distribution. If one key is used to encrypt a message, then only the other key in the pair can be used to decrypt it.
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p) What are Public Key Cryptography Standards?

Digital Signature India
Public Key Cryptography Standards are a set of standard protocols for the development of a public key infrastructure (PKI). These standards include RSA encryption, password-based encryption, extended certificate syntax, and cryptographic message syntax for the S/MIME secure e-mail standard. Developed in 1991 by RSA Laboratories with representatives from various computer vendors, PKCS is today widely deployed in public key cryptography systems.
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Are there other efforts to find RSA's Secret DES Key?

DESCHALL Project Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. After some other efforts folded, there are three efforts that are major contenders for finding the key. These are... It's noteworthy that we've got the fastest key search rate by far. Despite the fact that we seem to have fewer clients than another, the ones we have are extremely fast. As a result, we've nearly moved into first place for amount of keyspace searched, and we have been holding on to first place for keyspace search rate for quite some time.
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How do I negotiate secret key with another user?

SILC Secure Internet Live Conferencing
It is important to negotiate secret keys if you cannot trust the servers and the network you are using. By negotiating a key with the user you want to talk to assures that no one except you and your friend is able to encrypt and decrypt the messages. The secret key negotiation is done with the KEY command. Here is an example of how to negotiate keys for securing private messages. By giving command: /KEY MSG john agreement 192.168.2.
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What is Cryptography?

Able Encryption Software. Safe Soft Corporation. Frequently ...
Cryptography is the art and science of keeping files and messages secure. It works by mathematically transforming plaintext messages or files into a ciphertext, a process known as encryption.
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Digital Certificate Registration Center
Cryptography is the science of enabling secure communications between a sender and one or more recipients. This is achieved by the sender scrambling a message (with a computer program and a secret key) and leaving the recipient to unscramble the message (with the same computer program and a key, which may or may not be the same as the sender's key). The emphasis of cryptography is on data confidentiality, data integrity, sender authentication, and non-repudiation of origin/data accountability.
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The National Committee for Voting Integrity (NCVI)
Cryptography is the science of mathematical security. On modern computers, cryptography includes encryption, authentication, and integrity. A good introduction to the concepts can be found here:
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DCSSI FAQ
Cryptography is a science intended to convert unencrypted information or signals into information or signals using secret conventions called keys, such that the information or signals are unintelligible to third parties who are not aware of the secret used to convert the signals, or to perform the reverse operation using hardware or software means designed for this purpose.
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Digital Identity
Cryptography is the science of disguising information through encryption (scrambling) and restoring it to its original form through decryption. It provides similar, but much stronger, security assurances that signatures, paper envelopes and codebooks have always provided.
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How is public key cryptography used to make a digital signature?

DCSSI FAQ
Public key cryptography is characterised by the use of two mathematically related keys - the private key and the public key. The private key generates the signature. It is specific to the signatory and it must be kept secret. The public key is used to verify a signature. It may be published, but its integrity must be maintained.
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How is public key cryptography used to encrypt information?

DCSSI FAQ
When several users use cryptography to secure their exchanges, they share the same secret key. A single user may communicate with different groups that must not share the same secret, because they do not access the same type of information. This leads to the use of a large number of keys, as soon as this scheme is extended to a large user community. Secret key management, which is the guarantee of their confidentiality and integrity, then becomes difficult in terms of resources and organisation.
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What kind of cryptography and what key length is used in the CryptoPhone?

Darseta" - FAQ
All calls are encrypted with 256-bit keys using AES and Twofish as counter mode stream ciphers. Using both AES and Twofish provides a much stronger encryption then using only one algorithm. For the highly unlikely case that a weakness is discovered in one of the algorithms, the use of the second algorithm provides still a sufficient margin of security. The use of the two very strong algorithms is a unique feature of the CryptoPhone.
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My secret key ring has been stolen or lost, what do I do?

The comp.security.pgp FAQ
Assuming that you selected a good solid random pass phrase to encrypt your secret key ring, you are probably still safe. It takes two parts to decrypt a message, the secret key ring, and its pass phrase. The secret key is encrypted with the passphrase before it is stored in the secret keyring. Assuming you have a backup copy of your secret key ring, you should generate a key revocation certificate and upload the revocation to one of the public key servers.
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Can there be unquestioned assurance that the key remains secret?

The National Committee for Voting Integrity (NCVI)
Of course not. Keys are either known by people, or stored in devices that people have access to. No matter what protocols and procedures are used, people are always prone to making mistakes The most we can do is minimize our reliance on secrets and then build procedural safeguards around the few secrets that we depend on people to keep.
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Where can I learn more about cryptography?

DESCHALL Project Frequently Asked Questions
There are a few good resources available that should be able to help you better understand cryptography, regardless of your level of experience. Some of these can get quite technical, so if you're looking for a quicker introduction to some of the concepts and such, you'll probably want to grab the Snake Oil FAQ which was written to be understandable by an IS-type person without lots of background in mathematics or information security.
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c) What is the format of Private Key?

Digital Signature India
Private Keys are not easily viewed simply because they need to remain secure. They exist for the most part in an encrypted state within the registry of the Operating System. However, if specified at the time of key pair generation, it is possible to export a Private Key as a data file for backup purposes. Like any cryptographic key, Private Keys are simply long, random numbers.
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I still have my secret key, but lost my public key. What can I do?

GnuPG Frequently Asked Questions - GnuPG.org
All OpenPGP secret keys have a copy of the public key inside them, and in a worst-case scenario, you can create yourself a new public key using the secret key. A tool to convert a secret key into a public one has been included (it's actually a new option for gpgsplit) and is available with GnuPG versions 1.2.1 or later (or can be found in CVS). It works like this: One should first try to export the secret key and convert just this one. Using the entire secret keyring should work too.
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