
This works much like the normal logarithm: The difference is that only whole numbers are used, and in general, a modulus operation is involved.

Messages encrypted using the public key can only be decrypted with the private key. The public key can be known to everyone- it is used to encrypt messages. RSA involves a public key and private key. It is also a key pair (public and private key) generator. The algorithm is based on the fact that finding the factors of a large composite number is difficult: when the factors are prime numbers, the problem is called prime factorization. This is also called public key cryptography, because one of the keys can be given to anyone. Asymmetric means that there are two different keys. It is an asymmetric cryptographic algorithm.


RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) is an algorithm used by modern computers to encrypt and decrypt messages. You can help Wikipedia by reading Wikipedia:How to write Simple English pages, then simplifying the article. The English used in this article or section may not be easy for everybody to understand.
