Mastering Active Directory

Signing, encryption, and decryption

In the previous two scenarios, I have explained how digital encryption and digital signatures work with PKI. But both of these scenarios can be combined together to provide the encryption and signing at the same time. In order to do that, we use two additional techniques:

• Symmetric keys: A one-time symmetric key will be used for the message encryption process, as it is faster than the asymmetric key encryption algorithms. This key needs to be available for the receiver, but to improve the security, it will still be encrypted using the receiver's public key.
• Hashing: During the signing process, the system will generate a one-way hash value to represent the original data. Even if someone manages to get that ...