Elliptic Curve Cryptography

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What Does Elliptic Curve Cryptography Mean?

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is a modern type of public-key cryptography wherein the encryption key is made public, whereas the decryption key is kept private. This particular strategy uses the nature of elliptic curves to provide security for all manner of encrypted products.

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Techopedia Explains Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Part of the use of elliptic curve cryptography has to do with the trick of designing encryption systems that prevent reverse engineering. Some strategies used in this public-key encryption technique involve the composition of multiple large numbers or prime integers. Logarithmic processes can also help create more complex cryptography, where a category called discrete logarithm-based protocols has been modified to include elliptic curve calculations.

Some types of cryptography involving elliptic curve methodology are in some ways branded or attributed to specific pioneers in the cryptography field. For example, a method called Diffie-Hellman is the combination of engineering by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, two 1970s-era IT and mathematical professionals who came up with specific ways to use this strategy in encryption.

As a way to describe the utility of elliptic curve cryptography, experts point out that it is a “next generation” resource that provides better security than the original public-key cryptography systems developed earlier. The rest of the nature of elliptic curve cryptography has to do with complex mathematics and the use of sophisticated algorithmic models.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.