Internet of Things for Architects

Asymmetric cryptography

Asymmetric cryptography is also called public key cryptography. Asymmetric keys are generated in pairs (encrypting and decrypting). The keys can be interchangeable meaning a key could both encrypt and decrypt, but that is not a requirement. The typical use, however, is to generate a pair of keys and keep one private and the other public. This section describes the three foundational public key cryptograms: RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and Elliptical Curves. 

Note that unlike symmetric key counts in a mesh where any node can communicate with any other node, asymmetric cryptography only requires 2n keys or O(n).

The first asymmetric public key encryption method described is the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman algorithm, or RSA, developed ...