Private Key and Public Key

You must know that the Private key and public key play a big role in keeping your information secure in this digital world to buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrency and why it’s essential to keep your private key private.

Today, In this article on your best blog money08.com– we shall learn different types of things about private keys and public keys.

Because the differences between private and public keys are important to understand. While it’s not necessary to be an expert on the complex cryptography that goes into key creation. And you will be able to secure your digital money if you know about your security keys.

What do you mean by a private key and a public key?

You know that Private and public keys play a big role in keeping your information secure in this digital world to buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrency and more. Public and private keys are an integral part of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They allow you to send and receive cryptocurrency without requiring a third party to verify the transactions. These keys are a part of the public-key cryptography (PKC) framework. You can use these keys to send your cryptocurrency to anyone, anywhere, at any time. The public and private keys fit together as a key pair. You may share your public keys in order to receive transactions, but your private keys must be kept secret. If anyone has access to the private keys, they will also have access to any cryptocurrency associated with those keys.

What is a private key?

A private key means a long series of letters (both lowercase and uppercase), numbers, and symbols combined in random order to create a password that the holder/owner can use to encrypt and decrypt messages (or data).

In the case of cryptocurrency, if you know the private key, you can access a crypto wallet and buy, sell, trade, or withdraw whatever you find there.

Because the private key gives access to everything, it’s essential to keep it as secret and secure as possible.

If you lose or forget your private key, you will not be able to access your wallet or its funds. Similarly, once lost or forgotten, there is no way for anyone else to help you recover the private key. Lose your private key and you lose your cryptocurrency.

A private key is an example of symmetric encryption. You could encode data with your private key and send it off, but the receiver would need that same private key to decode the data.

It’s very much like the simple substitution cipher. You could use it to encode a message, but the receiver would also need the knowledge of the substitution cipher to decode the message.

What is a public key?

Same as a private key, a public key is a long series of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols combined in random order, using the private key to create a password that the holder can use to encrypt data.

Notice that the public key can only be used to encrypt data — it can’t be used to decrypt data.

That makes the public key ideal for sharing with others. Once a sender encrypts a message with the public key, the only way to decrypt it is with the private key.

A public key is a fundamental component of asymmetric encryption, which is the foundation of all blockchain and cryptocurrency transactions.

What is the example of a private key and a public key?

Jony wants to send Jolly an encrypted email. To do this, Jony takes Jolly’s public key and encrypts his message to her. Then, when Jolly receives the message, she takes the private key that is known only to her in order to decrypt the message from Jony.

Although attackers might try to compromise the server and read the message, they will be unable to because they lack the private key to decrypt the message. Only Jolly will be able to decrypt the message as she is the only one with the private key. And, when Jolly wants to reply, she simply repeats the process, encrypting her message to Jony using Jony’s public key.

What is the difference between a Private key and a public key?

Here is the table showing the difference between a private key and a public key-

No.Private KeyPublic Key
1.The private key is Symmetrical because there is only one key which is called a secret key.The public key is Asymmetrical because there are two types of keys: private and public keys.
2.In this, the same key (secret key) and algorithm are used to encrypt and decrypt the message.In public-key cryptography, two keys are used, one key is used for encryption, and the other is used for decryption.
3.In private key cryptography, the key is kept a secret.In public-key cryptography, one of the two keys is kept a secret.
4.The private key is faster than the public key.It is slower than a private key.
5.In this cryptography, the sender and receiver need to share the same key.In this cryptography, the sender and receiver do not need to share the same key.
6.In this cryptography, the key is private.In this cryptography, the public key can be public and a private key is private.
7.It is an efficient technology.It is an inefficient technology.
8.It is used for large amounts of text.It is used for only short messages.
9.There is the possibility of losing the key which renders the systems void.There is less possibility of key loss, as the key is held publicly.
10.A private key can be used for both encryption and decryption in the case of symmetric encryptionWhile a public key can only be used for encryption in the case of asymmetric encryption.

How do a Private Key and a Public Key Work Together?

According to binance.us, It works together, we will learn with an example to know how a private key and a public key work together to make asymmetric encryption and cryptocurrency security possible.

Let’s suppose that Jony and Jolly want to exchange private data — it could be anything from a text-based message (like “I like you!”) to a cryptocurrency of some kind (like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or an NFT).

Jony uses her private key to generate a public key that she then sends to Jolly (typically online via email or some other digital medium).

Jolly uses Jony’s public key to encrypt the data he wants to transmit to her and then sends it out over the internet. When Jony receives the encrypted message, she uses her private key — that only she knows — to decrypt the data.

If Jony wants to respond to Jolly, she uses Jolly’s public key to encrypt the message and sends it off. When Jolly receives the message, he uses his private key to decrypt the data.

During this process, it is entirely possible for someone to gain access to the servers handling the data and try to decrypt (or read) the messages. However, they would be unable to do so because they don’t have Jony’s or Jolly’s private key.

This might not seem that important when a simple text-based message like “I like you!” is involved, but if Jony and Jolly are transmitting cryptocurrency worth thousands of dollars, security becomes crucial.

Someone might gain access to the servers handling the cryptocurrency transfer, but they won’t be able to redirect, steal, or take ownership of the coins or tokens because they don’t have the necessary private key.

What are the Encryption Basics of a private and public key?

It’s important to talk about the basic theory behind the encryption involved in creating and using them. The relevant terms you need to know are

  1. Cryptography key,
  2. Symmetric,
  3. And asymmetric.

Cryptography Keys

A cryptography key is a string of characters used within an encryption algorithm for altering data so that it appears random. In old-school cryptography, we might use a substitution cipher that looks something like this:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA

So, A = B, B = C, C=D, and so on. With this cipher, both the sender and the receiver know to shift the bottom row of letters one space to the left.

The sender starts with the top row, finds the first letter of their message, moves down to the corresponding letter in the bottom row, and writes that instead.

For example,

If we wanted to send you the word CAT and encrypt it with this cipher, we would write DBU. You would then reverse the process to decode the message: Start with the bottom row and find the corresponding letter in the top row.

This is a very basic example, but it serves as the foundation for more complex cryptography.

Symmetric Encryption

Symmetric encryption involves using one key to encrypt the message (or data) and the same key to decrypt the message.

The simple substitution cipher mentioned above is an example of symmetric encryption. There is only one key — shifting the English alphabet one space to the left — and both the sender and the receiver know what it is.

The problem is that you, the sender, have to somehow communicate the key to the receiver so they can decipher the message. That opens a whole range of security issues because a third party can intercept the key, read your messages, and steal your secrets.

That’s where asymmetric encryption comes in.

Asymmetric Encryption

Asymmetric encryption involves using a pair of keys — one private and one public — to encrypt and decrypt data.

The public key is generated from the private key using complicated mathematical algorithms, including Rivest-Shamir-Adelman (RSA), Digital Signature Standard (DSS), and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).

The public key can then be openly distributed so that anyone can use it to send data (or cryptocurrency in this case) to the owner of the public key. Once data is encrypted with the public key, only the private key can decrypt it.

And just so you understand the complexity of asymmetric encryption, it is possible to reverse the process and figure out the private key from the public key, but it would take an eternity (more than 40 x 10^31 years) to compute using the most powerful processors now available.

Faqs on a Private key and Public key

1. What is a public and private key in Blockchain?

A public key allows you to receive cryptocurrency transactions. It’s a cryptographic code that’s paired with a private key. While anyone can send transactions to the public key, you need the private key to “unlock” them and prove that you are the owner of the cryptocurrency received in the transaction.

2. What are the private keys and public keys in a certificate?

The public key is made available to anyone who wants to verify the identity of the certificate holder, while the private key is a unique key that is kept secret. This enables the certificate holder to digitally sign documents, emails, and other information without a third party being able to impersonate them.

3. Is the public key of every user unique or the same?

Yes. It is unique because, In asymmetric cryptography, key pairs are randomly generated.

4. How many private keys are possible?

A private key is a 256-bit number. This means that it is represented in binary in 256 numbers of 0 or 1. In total, this means there are a total of (almost) 2^256 combinations of private keys.

5. Does the private key expire?

Private keys do not have an expiration date. They are expired by destroying them.

6. Is the public key confidential?

Public-key encryption thus provides for both confidentiality and authentication. The benefits of public-key encryption are clear. The sender and recipient no longer need to communicate previously, nor do they need to exchange private keys to send a communication that is signed and secure.

7. Is Bitcoin private or public?

The best-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and others are public as their transactions are completely transparent.

By larry Brown

A senior accountant, and banking & finance expert, with five years long experience in banking, finance, Investment, and money management.

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