Classical Public-key Method
The public-key method of cryptography allows a sender to sign a message (often only the cryptographic hash of the message) with a sign key in such a way that any recipient can, using the corresponding public key, check the authenticity of the message. To allow this, the public key is made broadly available to all potential recipients. To make sure only the legal author of the message can validly sign the message, the public key is created from a random, private sign key, using a one-way function. This is a function that is designed such that computing the result given the input is very easy, but computing the input given the result is very difficult. A classic example is the multiplication of two very large primes: The multiplication is easy, but factoring the product without knowing the primes is normally considered infeasible.
- easy
- very difficult
Read more about this topic: Quantum Digital Signature
Famous quotes containing the words classical and/or method:
“The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance—Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, for instance, is always greater than its performance—whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being performed.”
—André Previn (b. 1929)
“Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)