Chapter 1. Basic Cryptography

This chapter details the basic building blocks and fundamental issues you need to understand before moving on to more complex security technologies. Cryptography is a basis for secure communications; it is, therefore, important that you understand three basic cryptographic functions: symmetric encryption, asymmetric encryption, and one-way hash functions. Most current authentication, integrity, and confidentiality technologies derive from these three cryptographic functions. This chapter also introduces digital signatures as a practical example of how you can combine asymmetric encryption with one-way hash algorithms to provide data authentication and integrity.

Authentication, authorization, and key management issues ...

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