I know that they all use asymmetric encryption, but I don’t understand their differences and applications. Any guidance is much appreciated!
In: Technology
These are not different kinds of encryption, they are different *protocols* that give other people the information they need to understand how they can decrypt or verify your message. They may allow for an array of different options for exact cryptographic algorithm, which is important so that we can upgrade to more secure ones over time, or fix bugs. The connection protocols, TLS and SSH also have some kind of negotiation built in, so that the machines can understand each other and perform key exchange.
PGP (1991): Pretty Good Privacy, designed for digital signatures and encryption for individual messages, such as emails. You *might* be using this somewhere without knowing about it, e.g. it might be used to sign your emails.
SSL (1994)/TLS (1999): Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security, protocol for encrypted *connections*, also allowing for proof of identity with digital certificates. Best for public facing web servers, to the point that all of your web traffic goes over TLS now, browsers will warn you if it is not.
SSH (1995): Secure SHell, secure machine to machine command line protocol, which includes logging into a user account. Similar, in principal, to SSL, but higher level and more advanced and allows all machines to interface with each other at the command line level. You probably won’t use SSH unless you are a developer, the most common use is SFTP (which is basically just running the FTP protocol inside an SSH connection.) I’ll let you guess what the S stands for.
Latest Answers