Conventional cryptographic primitives

Abstract

Modern network security systems contain cryptographic primitives as an essential building block. In this chapter, we discuss conventional cryptographic primitives, which are also known as symmetric primitives. The term symmetric stems from the fact that in order to use conventional primitives, all parties need to share the same set of secret keys. Hence, all parties have the same capabilities. This is not the case with asymmetric primitives, where some keys are known to one party only. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.