Explain Like I'm Five

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How is the Recipient the Only One Able to Decrypt End to End Encryption? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I understand that in end to end encryption the message is encrypted and only the recipient has the key to Decrypt it. How is the key transmitted, and how can the key not get intercepted with the message?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

With asymmetric encryption there are 2 keys - 1 is public (= everyone can look it up) and 1 is private (only the receiver has that key). Those are mathematically related.
When I send a message, I use the receivers Public key to encrypt the message - so that message is only decryptable with the private key, so the recipient alone can decrypt it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

How is the recipient the only one with a private key? If the key is sent with the message, then how does it determine the recipient? Couldn't someone spoof the recipient's credentials? What credentials are used to determine the proper recipient?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Lets say we wanna talk. I keep a private decryption key and send you a (public) encryption key. Everyone now knows how to encrypt a message for me but nobody, not even you, can read it. The decryption ley is NEVER SENT and kept secret, the encryption key is public but can never decrypt anything.

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