Explain symmetric key cryptography.
Answers
An encryption system in which the sender and receiver of a message share a single, common key that is used to encrypt and decrypt the message. Contrast this with public-key cryptology, which utilizes two keys - a public key to encrypt messages and a private key to decrypt them.
Symmetric-key systems are simpler and faster, but their main drawback is that the two parties must somehow exchange the key in a secure way. Public-key encryption avoids this problem because the public key can be distributed in a non-secure way, and the private key is never transmitted.
Symmetric-key cryptography is sometimes called secret-key cryptography. The most popular symmetric-key system is the Data Encryption Standard (DES).
Answer: Symmetric-key cryptography refers to encryption methods in which both the sender and receiver share the same key (or, less commonly, in which their keys are different, but related in an easily computable way).
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