Information Security: Public Key Cryptography (Definitions)

"Also known as asymmetric cryptography, a form of cryptography in which a user has a pair of cryptographic keys - a public key and a private key. The private key is kept secret, while the public key may be widely distributed. The keys are related mathematically, but the private key cannot be practically derived from the public key. A message encrypted with the public key can be decrypted only with the corresponding private key." (Martin Oberhofer et al, "Enterprise Master Data Management", 2008)

"Cryptography involving public keys, as opposed to cryptography making use of shared secrets. See Symmetric cryptography." (Mark S Merkow & Lakshmikanth Raghavan, "Secure and Resilient Software Development", 2010)

"An approach to cryptography in which each user has two related keys, one public and one private" (Nell Dale & John Lewis, "Computer Science Illuminated" 6th Ed., 2015)

"An asymmetric cryptosystem where the encrypting and decrypting keys are different and it is computationally infeasible to calculate one form the other, given the encrypting algorithm. In public key cryptography, the encrypting key is made public, but the decrypting key is kept secret." (Adam Gordon, "Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK 4th Ed.", 2015)

"An encryption method that uses a two-part key: a public key and a private key. Users generally distribute their public key but keep their private key to themselves. This is also known as asymmetric cryptography." (James R Kalyvas & Michael R Overly, "Big Data: A business and legal guide", 2015)

"Encryption system using a public-private key pair for encryption or digital signature. The encrypt and decrypt keys are different, and one cannot derive the private key from the public key." (O Sami Saydjari, "Engineering Trustworthy Systems: Get Cybersecurity Design Right the First Time", 2018)

"Public-key cryptography refers to a cryptographic system requiring two separate keys, one of which is secret and one of which is public. Although different, the two parts of the key pair are mathematically linked. One key locks or encrypts the plaintext, and the other unlocks or decrypts the cipher text. Neither key can perform both functions by itself. The public key may be published without compromising security, while the private key must not be revealed to anyone not authorized to read the messages." (Addepalli V N Krishna & M Balamurugan, "Security Mechanisms in Cloud Computing-Based Big Data", 2019)

"A cryptographic system that requires public and private keys. The private key can decrypt messages encrypted with the corresponding public key, and vice versa. The public key can be made available to the public without compromising security and used to verify that messages sent by the holder of the private key must be genuine." (Daniel Leuck et al, "Learning Java" 5th Ed., 2020)