In the Wolfram Language, encryption isn’t limited to text. This flexibility is carried over to encryption and decryption, as those functions can use any generated key: For example, to generate a secure symmetric key, you could simply run this:īut if you wanted to generate a more specific kind of key, you could do this: These functions have been designed to be usable by those without a technical understanding of cryptography, but still retain enough flexibility to satisfy those who do. Something encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the private one:Īsymmetric cryptography is usually used for exchanging small amounts of information, for instance, a symmetric key that can then be used for transferring a larger message. Asymmetric cryptography does not require a preexisting relationship-both parties have different keys, typically a public key and a private key. Symmetric cryptography is great for encrypting large amounts of information very securely and very efficiently, but there needs to be a preexisting relationship between both parties to be able to share a key in the first place.

This is called symmetric cryptography because both the party encrypting and the party decrypting share a single key. One very simple way of arranging this is to have a single key that is used to encrypt as well as decrypt, much like the locking and unlocking of a door: The notion of a key in cryptography is similar to the way we use keys in everyday life, in that only someone with a certain key can perform a certain action. Because of cryptography’s widespread use, we added the basic building blocks of modern cryptography to the Wolfram Language with functions using OpenSSL for key generation, symmetric encryption/decryption, and asymmetric encryption/decryption. Now that computers routinely manage a huge amount of communication, there is little downside to invisibly applying cryptography to almost everything, from verifying where information comes from to exchanging information securely. Cryptography has existed for thousands of years, but before serious computers came around, only specific kinds of messages were worth encrypting.

Playing cdf files in worlfram player