What is a Symmetric Encryption?

In this modern world where everyone is posting and consuming a lot of information from the internet, it is also an open window for attackers to get access to someone's personal data and tamper with it or make use of it for the loss of the owner, thus it becomes quite dangerous to let the data travel over the internet in it original format. This can be done using encryption of data that converts the data into some bogus information which will not be useful for anyone who doesn't know how we gain back the original text. In this article how we can make use of Symmetric Encryption to convert plaintext into cipher text and then decrypt this cipher text back to the plain text.

What is Symmetric Encryption?

When the plaintext is encrypted and decrypted using the same key, it is know as symmetric encryption. It is also known as "shared-key" or "private-key" encrytption.

The key is a piece of a shared secret between the two parties involved hence it is 'shared-key' and is kept secret, hence the name 'private-key' is justified.

Working on Symmetric Encryption

These operations are performed to share the message securely over the network using the symmetric encryption technique.

Key Generation

This is the first step in the symmetric encryption technique in which the private key needs to be chosen and must be securely communicated/ transferred over the network for the further use.

Encryption

In this step, the plaintext (this is the original message to be sent over the network) is converted to some bogus, unintelligible text called the ciphertext using the shared secret key and the some algorithm.

Transfer of CipherText

In this step the ciphertext is transferred over the network, since we have encrypted the original message even if this ciphertext is intercepted it will be unintelligible to the interceptor unless and until our shared secret key and algorithm is also compromised.

Decryption

This is the last step where the receiver uses the reverse encryption algorithm and the shared secret key to convert the ciphertext back to the plaintext this is called decryption.

Challenges of Symmetric Encryption

Although symmetric encryption is considered very much because of its speed and efficiency, it also has some chanlleges:

• The main challenge is securely sharing the secret key because if this key is compromised the entire communication is compromised.
• Storing the key securely is also a major challenge for this technique.
• As the number of users is increasing day-by-day, the complexity of managing and securely sharing these secret keys will increase exponentially.