Asymmetric vs. Symmetric Cryptography

While asymmetric encryption ​works really well in untrusted environments, ​it’s also computationally more expensive and complex.

​On the other hand, symmetric encryption algorithms are ​faster and more efficient in ​encrypting large amounts of data.

An asymmetric encryption ​algorithm is chosen as ​a key exchange mechanism or cipher. ​What this means is that, ​the symmetric encryption key or shared secret, ​is transmitted securely to the other party using ​asymmetric encryption to keep ​the shared secret secure in transit. ​Once the shared secret is received, ​data can be sent quickly and efficiently and ​securely using an symmetric encryption cipher.

MACs (Message Authentication Codes): A bit of information that allows authentication of a received message, ensuring that the message came from the alleged sender and not a third party masquerading as them

• It also ensures that the message wasn’t modified ​in some way in order to provide data integrity.
• HMAC (Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Codes): It uses a cryptographic hash function along with a secret key to generate a MAC
• CMACs (Cipher-based Message Authentication Codes): The process is similar to HMAC, but instead of using a hashing function to produce a digest, a symmetric cipher with a shared keys used to encrypt the message and the resulting output is used as the MAC
  • CBC-MAC (Cipher block chaining message authentication codes): A mechanism for building MACs using block ciphers