Archived Forum Post

Index of archived forum posts

Question:

Encryption with asymmentric algorithm

Sep 04 '15 at 08:52

Hello: One of my customers wants to encrypt files with an asymmetric algorithm. (using a digital certificate) Is it possible to use Chilkat to do that? I have read examples but the documentation says that the methods for encrypt are "aes", "des", "3des", which are symmetric algorihms. Can someone help me. An examples will be great.

Thank you Victor


Answer

RSA encryption is NEVER used for the encryption of bulk data. RSA would be used to generate a symmetric encryption key for a symmetric encryption algorithm such as AES, TwoFish, Blowfish, etc. The file data is then encrypted using this symmetric key w/ the symmetric algorithm. This is what happens when a certificate is used. The reverse process is to decrypt the symmetric key using RSA, and then use the decrypted symmetric key for the decryption of the bulk data.


Answer

Thank you, I am sorry. I am not a expert in these matters. I know that with RSA a should not encrypt files, but the question is:is it possible to encrypt a file with a asymmetric algoritm? If yes, do you have some examples?

Regards,