Timeline for Is the private key of a private/public key pair also a symmetric key?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Apr 19, 2018 at 19:47 | history | edited | poncho | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 19, 2018 at 19:46 | comment | added | poncho | @phunsoft: "Is the RSA private key also a symmetric key?"; actually, see the example I cited in my answer for an RSA private key that would not work (alone) as a symmetric key (as you wouldn't be able to "encrypt") | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 19:35 | comment | added | phunsoft | so I understand I should have made clear that it is RSA which I seem to have a fairly good understanding (starting to doubt how good :-) Now for RSA, would my assumptions be correct? And, comming back to the original question: Is the RSA private key also a symmetric key? | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 19:19 | comment | added | poncho | @phunsoft: you're missing that not all signature methods work like that. For example, ECDSA works by the verifier checking that the x-coordinate of $hs^{-1}G + rs^{-1}P$ is the value $r$ from the signature. Hash based signatures work by the verifier performing a series of hashes, and checking if the last value is the hash listed in the public key. In neither case is anything which can be called "encryption" is involved. | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 18:09 | comment | added | phunsoft | Your last paragraph confuese me. I thought that signing a message was done by encrypting the message digest (MD) using the private key. Somone wanting to verify the signature would then decrypt the MD using the corresponding public key. What am I missing? | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 14:36 | history | answered | poncho | CC BY-SA 3.0 |