In cryptography, public-key cryptosystems are convenient in that they do not require the sender and receiver to share a common secret in order to communicate securely (among other useful properties). However, they often rely on complicated mathematical computations and are thus generally much more inefficient than comparable symmetric-key cryptosystems. In many applications, the high cost of encrypting long messages in a public-key cryptosystem can be prohibitive. A hybrid cryptosystem is one which combines the convenience of a public-key cryptosystem with the efficiency of a symmetric-key cryptosystem.
A hybrid cryptosystem can be constructed using any two separate cryptosystems:
- a key encapsulation scheme, which is a public-key cryptosystem, and
- a data encapsulation scheme, which is a symmetric-key cryptosystem.
The hybrid cryptosystem is itself a public-key system, whose public and private keys are the same as in the key encapsulation scheme.
Note that for very long messages the bulk of the work in encryption/decryption is done by the more efficient symmetric-key scheme, while the inefficient public-key scheme is used only to encrypt/decrypt a short key value.
Example[]
To encrypt a message addressed to Alice in a hybrid cryptosystem, Bob does the following:
- Obtains Alice's public key.
- Generates a fresh symmetric key for the data encapsulation scheme.
- Encrypts the message under the data encapsulation scheme, using the symmetric key just generated.
- Encrypt the symmetric key under the key encapsulation scheme, using Alice's public key.
- Send both of these encryptions to Alice.
To decrypt this hybrid ciphertext, Alice does the following:
- uses her private key to decrypt the symmetric key contained in the key encapsulation segment.
- uses this symmetric key to decrypt the message contained in the data encapsulation segment.
Security[]
If both the key encapsulation and data encapsulation schemes are secure against adaptive chosen ciphertext attacks, then the hybrid scheme inherits that property as well.[1] However, it is possible to construct a hybrid scheme secure against adaptive chosen ciphertext attack even if the key encapsulation has a slightly weakened security definition (though the security of the data encapsulation must be slightly stronger).[2]
References[]
ca:Criptografia híbrida de:Hybride Verschlüsselung es:Criptografía híbrida eu:Kriptografia hibrido nl:Hybride cryptografie