What Is Encryption? Public Key Encryption and its Uses | Explained

Encryption Defn.

Encryption is a popular topic if it comes to hacking and security in the ultramodern computerized world. encryption is used in many services. For example, recent Whatsapp's end-to-end encryption, Gmail, Facebook encryption, Google Drive's encryption, also encryption used to secure twitter account, to secure private messages. All of you have heard about encryption. But what is encryption and how does it works? all these things you gonna read in this post.
       Encryption is not a new thing that we use nowadays, it is also an old thing that we used for years. Encryption means locking the data or messages in a way that no one can read without the sender's willing. The data or messages are translated to machine language and then generates a key to decrypt it. Without the decryption key, no one can read the messages or data. Consider that a person writing a message using A-Z alphabets and if he writes C as A and B as X, like this, no one can read his message except him until he will give the decryption key. The messages will like this-

Message:

Encryption is a process of encoding the messages in a way that only authorized user can read it

Encrypted Message:

 FsFv.GHPn6xX0R8fuVnWZMZ91HqKpVmoEBRAyxQVIQShPr0s8fCOvaapLfx.y4gj2b4tlwKuncsIPh1FWF3GnfTfnzSoLsfUAAae0YrZ5rT.JNpXHvXSuAjfmJqdeqQaidmJp24mCWb6gX8T.nxQe09dWp5ZL4FvHw9Lux0yhdEjduwYkqreRLa

The normal messages are referred as plain text and encrypted using an encryption algorithm called cipher. The text generated by using Cipher can only be read if it is decrypted. An encryption scheme uses random encryption key generated by an algorithm. For this reason, it is become possible to decrypt the message without processing the key. But if well computational resources and well computer skills are applied in encryption scheme then it is possible to design a better encryption scheme.

Public Key Encryption

The most used encryption is Public Key Encryption and it is used in Gmail, messages even in WhatsApp message encryption. In easy words, Public Key Encryption is, consider that there is two person and both of them have two keys, one is private key and another is a public key. Everybody has the public key but private keys are different for each person which only the person can understand. The formula how to decode the delivered messages is in the keys. If the messages are encrypted by public key then it can only be decrypted by using the private key and if the messages are encrypted by private key then it can only be decrypted by the public key. Giving an example for better understanding, consider that there is two-person, John and Kevin. John sent a message to Kevin "hello". John encrypted the message by Kevin's public key (as everybody has the public keys) and sent it to Kevin but Kevin can decrypt the message only by using his private key. So no third person can read the message between their data transmission. But if they want it to be more secure then John will first encrypt the message by Kevin's public key and then again encrypt it by his private key and will send it to Kevin. kevin will first decrypt the message by his private key and again will decrypt by the public key. In this way, it can be more secure. When two person sends messages in a messaging app, the users first tell their public keys to one another and they lock the messages by using the public keys and will send the messages.

Uses of encryption

Encryption is not a new thing. It has long been used by every militaries and government to protect their secret communication. According to the report submitted by Computer Security Institute in 2007, 71% of companies in the world use encryption for their data transit and 53% of them use encryption for some of their data storage. The Google Drive uses Hashtable to protect the stored data in a different format. The difference between Hashing and encryption is that encryption is a two-way function but Hashing is a one-way function. By using encryption data can be protected from cyber attacks. The Google's Drive uses the hashing technique to protect the stored data. Also, many computers and storage devices are protected by hashing technique. Banks also use encryption technology to protect their client's account details and records. Digital rights management systems use encryption technology, which prevents unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted materials and protects the software from reverse engineering. But The cyber-adversaries have developed some new attacks in response to encryption technology. The most recent attacks attempted on encryption technology are cryptographic attacks, attacks on encryption keys, data destruction attacks, integrity attacks and ransomware attacks.
             Encryption can protect the confidentiality of messages. So encryption is used in message verification code authenticity. Every cryptographic software and hardware use encryption but ensuring a succesfully designed encryption technology for getting security is a challanging problem.