Key-agreement protocolIn cryptography, a key-agreement protocol is a protocol whereby two or more parties can agree on a cryptographic key in such a way that both influence the outcome. If properly done, this precludes undesired third parties from forcing a key choice on the agreeing parties. Protocols that are useful in practice also do not reveal to any eavesdropping party what key has been agreed upon. Many key exchange systems have one party generate the key, and simply send that key to the other party—the other party has no influence on the key.
Message authenticationIn information security, message authentication or data origin authentication is a property that a message has not been modified while in transit (data integrity) and that the receiving party can verify the source of the message. Message authentication does not necessarily include the property of non-repudiation. Message authentication is typically achieved by using message authentication codes (MACs), authenticated encryption (AE), or digital signatures.
Public-key cryptographyPublic-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic algorithms based on mathematical problems termed one-way functions. Security of public-key cryptography depends on keeping the private key secret; the public key can be openly distributed without compromising security.
AuthenticationAuthentication (from αὐθεντικός authentikos, "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης authentes, "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicating a person or thing's identity, authentication is the process of verifying that identity. It might involve validating personal identity documents, verifying the authenticity of a website with a digital certificate, determining the age of an artifact by carbon dating, or ensuring that a product or document is not counterfeit.
Communication protocolA communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics, and synchronization of communication and possible error recovery methods. Protocols may be implemented by hardware, software, or a combination of both. Communicating systems use well-defined formats for exchanging various messages.
Cryptographic protocolA cryptographic protocol is an abstract or concrete protocol that performs a security-related function and applies cryptographic methods, often as sequences of cryptographic primitives. A protocol describes how the algorithms should be used and includes details about data structures and representations, at which point it can be used to implement multiple, interoperable versions of a program. Cryptographic protocols are widely used for secure application-level data transport.
Public key infrastructureA public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of information for a range of network activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email.
Mutual authenticationMutual authentication or two-way authentication (not to be confused with two-factor authentication) refers to two parties authenticating each other at the same time in an authentication protocol. It is a default mode of authentication in some protocols (IKE, SSH) and optional in others (TLS). Mutual authentication is a desired characteristic in verification schemes that transmit sensitive data, in order to ensure data security. Mutual authentication can be accomplished with two types of credentials: usernames and passwords, and public key certificates.
Secure multi-party computationSecure multi-party computation (also known as secure computation, multi-party computation (MPC) or privacy-preserving computation) is a subfield of cryptography with the goal of creating methods for parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs while keeping those inputs private. Unlike traditional cryptographic tasks, where cryptography assures security and integrity of communication or storage and the adversary is outside the system of participants (an eavesdropper on the sender and receiver), the cryptography in this model protects participants' privacy from each other.
Key (cryptography)A key in cryptography is a piece of information, usually a string of numbers or letters that are stored in a file, which, when processed through a cryptographic algorithm, can encode or decode cryptographic data. Based on the used method, the key can be different sizes and varieties, but in all cases, the strength of the encryption relies on the security of the key being maintained. A key's security strength is dependent on its algorithm, the size of the key, the generation of the key, and the process of key exchange.