RSA stands for Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, which is a widely used public-key cryptographic algorithm. It was invented by [[Ron Rivest]], [[Adi Shamir]], and [[Leonard Adleman]] in 1977. RSA is based on the mathematical problem of factoring large composite numbers into their prime factors. It utilizes two keys - a public key and a private key. The public key is used for encryption, while the private key is used for decryption. In RSA, anyone can encrypt a message using the recipient's public key, but only the recipient who possesses the corresponding private key can decrypt and read the message. This property of RSA makes it suitable for secure communication and confidentiality. The security of RSA relies on the difficulty of factoring large numbers into their prime factors. The larger the primes used in RSA, the more secure it becomes against brute-force attacks. RSA has been extensively used in various applications such as secure email communication, digital signatures, secure web browsing (HTTPS), virtual private networks (VPNs), and secure file transfer protocols (SFTP). However, compared to [[ECC]]-based algorithms like ECDSA, RSA requires larger key sizes to achieve equivalent security levels.# Related Terms