Chapter 2. Public-Key Cryptography

This chapter introduces the main concepts of public–key cryptography. The treatment is intentionally high level and brief, touching on only aspects directly relevant to an understanding of the remainder of this book. For a broader and more thorough discussion, please read the Handbook of Applied Cryptography by A. Menezes, P. van Oorschot, and S. Vanstone [MvOV97], Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C by B. Schneier [Sch96], Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice by W. Stallings [Sta99], or Cryptography: Theory and Practice by D. Stinson [Sti95].