Encryption: Strengths and Weaknesses of Public-key Cryptography

Public key cryptography has become an important means of ensuring confidentiality, notably through its use of key distribution, where users seeking private communication exchange encryption keys. It also features digital signatures which allow users to sign keys to verify their identities. This research presents the innovations in the field of public-key cryptography while also analyzing their shortcomings. We present methods of improving upon the weaknesses that include techniques involving double encryption and mutual authentication. These contributions introduce new levels of security to the subject with ideas to combat man in the middle attacks and other hacker scenarios. Public-key encryption with digital signatures offers both security and data integrity against most attackers.