There’s a server, a client, and a hacker in a network. For encryption, the client and the server need to share their private keys. Wouldn’t the hacker be able to grab those during their transmission and decrypt further messages as they please?

  • RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    8 months ago

    The actual math is way beyond me, but the algorithm is “one way” - it exploits the fact that given two prime numbers (ie, the private key) it is trivial to multiply them together, but if you only know the result (ie, the public key) it is computationally very expensive to determine the original prime factors. If you pick big enough numbers, it becomes effectively impossible to undo the multiplication