IBM Reveals New "Signcryption" Algorithm
The as-yet-unnamed security algorithm simultaneously encrypts and authenticates messages. That innovation significantly improves the speed of the security process over that of previous approaches, which perform encryption and authentication separately. The new algorithm works using symmetric cryptography, in which the same secret key -- or mathematical code -- is used to encrypt and decrypt a message. Another popular security technique, called public-key cryptography, uses two different keys, one to encrypt and one to decrypt. It is slower but is considered more secure.
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