How is Data Encrypted over the Network?

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Learn about how any data you send over the Internet is encrypted in the most beginner-friendly way possible!

As we all send and receive information over shared connections, we need a way to protect and encode our data so that only the intended recipients will be able to access it. This is done through a process called encryption. Although we don't normally think about it, encryption is used every time that we login into websites or transfer files over the Internet. You may have noticed that most pages you visit have URLs starting with 'https', which means they are using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol to encrypt the data sent to and from a website.

Cryptography is the science that takes care of encrypting and decrypting data. In computing, all information that is not yet encrypted is also referred to as plaintext, while encrypted data is known as ciphertext. Encrypting a message is nothing more than changing it in order to hide its original contents. We then decrypt it to get back the original message. This process has been used for centuries, dating back to Caesar's cipher (a simple substitution cipher) to the modern encryption algorithms that we have today that use 256-bit keys or more.

There are two types of encryption: symmetric and asymmetric. When the same key used to encrypt is also the one used to decrypt a message, we have symmetric encryption (only one key). On the contrary, for asymmetric encryption, we have different keys for encrypting and decrypting. There's a public key that can be known to everyone on the network and is used only for encryption, and a private key that is not shared (thus, kept secret) which is used to decrypt.

In this tutorial, we will get an understanding of how both sides involved in communication over the network (namely, a client and server) generate a secret session key with which they are able to communicate sensitive information securely. And no third party potentially eavesdropping on the conversation will be able to decrypt the messages exchanged. The establishment of this key happens in a sequence of steps where the client and server send each other credentials that are stored on both sides and used for the generation of the session key.

Let's now dive in to see what steps are necessary for the client and server to establish a secure session key! ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNYOjTNAE40