RSA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(cryptosystem)

RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) is a public-key cryptosystem that is widely used for secure data

transmission. It is also one of the oldest. The acronym RSA comes from the surnames of Ron Rivest,

Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, who publicly described the algorithm in 1977. An equivalent

system was developed secretly, in 1973 at GCHQ (the British signals intelligence agency), by the

English mathematician Clifford Cocks. That system was declassified in 1997.

Incorrect answers:

Diffie-Helmann - The first publicly described asymmetric algorithm. A cryptographic protocol that

allows two parties to establish a shared key over an insecure channel. Often used to allow parties to

exchange a symmetric key through some unsecure medium, such as the Internet. It was developed

by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Helmann in 1976.

DES - The Data Encryption Standard is a symmetric-key algorithm for the encryption of digital data.

Although its short key length of 56 bits makes it too insecure for applications, it has been highly

influential in the advancement of cryptography.

Developed in the early 1970s at IBM and based on an earlier design by Horst Feistel, the algorithm

was submitted to the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) following the agency's invitation to

propose a candidate for the protection of sensitive, unclassified electronic government data. In 1976,

after consultation with the National Security Agency (NSA), the NBS selected a slightly modified

version (strengthened against differential cryptanalysis, but weakened against brute-force attacks),

which was published as an official Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the United

States in 1977.

PKI - A public key infrastructure is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed

to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key

encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of information for a

range of network activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email. It is

required for activities where simple passwords are an inadequate authentication method and more

rigorous proof is required to confirm the identity of the parties involved in the communication and to

validate the information being transferred.