Public key cryptography, a system used to secure online traffic, carries a significant flaw, a group of European and American mathematicians and cryptographers has found. Public key cryptography requires the sender and the receiver of a message to each have a digital key to encrypt and decrypt it, respectively. One of these keys is kept private. For this to work securely, the keys have to be generated totally at random. However, the researchers found that some of the keys they found had duplicates, which might perhaps allow the owner of one of the duplicates to hack others’ messages.
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Random Public Crypto Keys Aren't So Random
Posted by: Richard Adhikari February 15, 2012 03:08 PMPublic key cryptography, a system used to secure online traffic, carries a significant flaw, a group of European and American mathematicians and cryptographers has found. Public key cryptography requires the sender and the receiver of a message to each have a digital key to encrypt and decrypt it, respectively. One of these keys is kept private. For this to work securely, the keys have to be generated totally at random. However, the researchers found that some of the keys they found had duplicates, which might perhaps allow the owner of one of the duplicates to hack others’ messages.