Chapter 5: Encryption

Chapter 5: Encryption

Overview

Encryption is what puts the "private" in virtual private networks. Without encryption, information fowing over a public network such as the Internet is transmitted openly. Such traffic can be intercepted and read by common sniffing techniques, making it anything but private. Readily available programs such as protocol analyzers or the network diagnostic tools built into some of today's operating systems can easily see the information as it is sent. Encrypting the data ensures that it won't be read by unauthorized users, ensuring confidentiality; confidentiality, authentication, and integrity are the three properties of a cryptosystem.

In this chapter, we'll look at the two basic types of encryption, known as secret key, or symmetric, encryption and public key, or asymmetric, encryption. The importance of key length in security will be discussed, along with the danger of relying strictly on key length to judge the strength of a cryptosystem. We'll see how the different types of encryption are used to build systems that provide for secure key exchanges and effective and fast encryption of VPN sessions. Finally, we'll discuss authentication, or the use of what are known as digital signatures so that the recipient can be certain of whom the data came from and that it hasn't been tampered with.

One important point to be made here is that when we refer to "users" in this chapter, we're not necessarily talking about individual people. Every entity on a VPN that needs to exchange data with other...

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Chapter 5: Encryption

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