CISSP Training Kit

Asymmetric key algorithms and cryptosystems

For nearly 5,000 years, only symmetric key cryptography existed, with all the weaknesses and problems that symmetric key cryptography introduced. The most critical of those issues was that of secure key distribution. How do you get a copy of the symmetric key to the recipient securely? In the 1940s, John Mauchly and John Eckert developed one of the first computers, the Electrical Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC, 1947). In the 1950s and 1960s, computers and the computational power they bring became more available, allowing researchers and scientists to write programs to crunch larger and larger numbers. Then, in the early 1970s, with computers more available than at any time in history, the paths ...