As we have noted, public and symmetric-key ciphers each have advantages over the other. One important advantage of symmetric-key ciphers is that they are less susceptible to exploitation related to message authentication. For example, when Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman first explained their idea of public-key ciphers, the way they envisioned public-key ciphers could be used most effectively was by a group of people who all wished to be able to communicate with each other spontaneously across a series of insecure communication lines. By way of illustration, suppose the group would like to use RSA ciphers to encrypt their messages. Each member of the group could choose their own personal encryption keys ...
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