Many Web store merchants understandably want to concentrate their energies on what they do best – selling – and either ignore the technical aspects or leave them for someone else to worry about. However, while Web store creation software continues to increase in power and ease of use, there is still a requirement for Web merchants to have a sound understanding of the technologies that underpin their stores. This resource takes you “under the hood” to explore the key technologies and explain in a straightforward manner how they are used for Web commerce.
Overview: When you think of encryption, you probably think of some sort of secret code that prevents others from reading your messages. Whilst this privacy aspect of cryptography is important, it is only one of four aspects that are of particular importance in electronic commerce.
- Authentication allows customers to be sure that the merchant they are sending their credit card details to is who they say they are. It can also allow merchant’s to verify that the customer is the real owner of the credit card being used.
- Integrity ensures that the messages have not been tampered with by a third party during transmission.
- Non-repudiation prevents customers or merchants denying they ever received or sent a particular message.
- Privacy prevents third parties from reading intercepted message.
Elements of an Encryption System
The main elements of an encryption system are the plaintext, the cryptographic algorithm, the key and the ciphertext.
- The plaintext is the raw message or data that is to be encrypted.
- A cryptographic algorithm or cipher is a mathematical set of rules that defines how the plain text is to be combined with a key.
- The key is a string of digits.
- The ciphertext is the encrypted message.
These terms are probably best illustrated through a very simple example.
If we take the phrase “Web store” and add 2 characters to each letter the phrase becomes “ygd uvqtg”. Here:
“Web store” is the plaintext
“add x characters to each letter” is the cryptographic algorithm
“2″ is the key
“ygd uvqtg” is the ciphertext
There are two main types of encryption in common use today: secret-key and public-key.
See Also:
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