What is Public Key Encryption (in 15 Words or Less)?
Public key encryption provides a secure, snoop-proof means of transporting small amounts of data from one party to another without the need for any previously agreed secret key information. What one needs to achieve this is a public-private key pair. The public key is made generally available while the private key is kept secret (by the person who generated it in the first place, usually). Data encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted by the person holding a copy of the private key, while data encrypted with the private key is known to come from the holder of that key. There is some further reading here. Our company, AlpineSoft, uses RSA public key encryption for generating software license codes that cannot be forged. When the user purchases our shareware application, he is emailed a license code which is signed with our private key. At the receiving end, the software verifies this code using our public key and only if the signature is valid is the license code accepted. Th
