Introduction to Data Encryption
The purpose of data encryption is to prevent unauthorised entities from knowing the true meaning of the data, while enabling authorised users to interpret the data correctly. Now, suppose you wish to encrypt the data stored in the flash memory to prevent unauthorised access. First, you need to understand the key concepts as shown in Figure 13.6. The original data stored in flash is referred to as plaintext, while the encrypted data generated by the encryption algorithm is known as ciphertext. This ciphertext is incomprehensible to unauthorised entities. The encryption algorithm utilises a key, which is a string of numbers or characters. In the example presented in Figure 13.6, the encryption algorithm adds 1 to (the ASCII code of) each character in the original string and replaces all the characters. The key used by the encryption algorithm is an integer number 1. The decryption process is the reverse of the encryption process, where each character is changed by subtracting 1, thereby recovering the plaintext.
All data encryption algorithms are based on the principle of replacing one set of data with another. Figure 13.6 uses the simplest single-code replacement encryption algorithm. In real applications, encryption algorithms are much more complex, but the principle is the same.
Data encryption algorithms can generally be divided into two categories: symmetric encryption algorithms and asymmetric encryption algorithms.
Symmetric encryption algorithms
As the name implies, symmetric encryption algorithms use the same key in both encryption and decryption process. Commonly used symmetric encryption algorithms include DES, 3DES, and AES. The encryption process shown in Figure 13.6 is the basic process of symmetric encryption. The key used for encryption and decryption is the same, that is, the integer number 1.
Asymmetric encryption algorithms
The asymmetric encryption algorithms use two different keys: public key and private key, which are a pair of strings with a specific association. The content encrypted by the public key can only be decrypted by the paired private key. Similarly, the content encrypted by the private key can only be decrypted by the paired public key.
A prerequisite for symmetric encryption is that the encryptor and the
decryptor must agree on a shared key, that is, they must know the
content of the key beforehand. However, in some cases, the encryptor and
decryptor have never met, nor exchanged data through any means other
than the network. In such cases without pre-agreed keys, how can the
encryptor and decryptor perform encryption or decryption? The answer is
asymmetric encryption algorithm.
Figure 13.7 shows the basic process of using asymmetric encryption and symmetric encryption together to transmit encrypted data, where asymmetric encryption is used to exchange the key used for encryption, and after getting the symmetric key, the client and server use the less resource-intensive symmetric encryption algorithm to protect the confidentiality of transmitted data.
The commonly-used asymmetric encryption algorithm is RSA algorithm.
Technical details about encryption algorithms will not be provided in this book. After gaining a foundational understanding of data encryption, we can proceed to a new journey.