In a symmetric key encryption, we had just one set of keys that are used for encryption and decryption. Although it is fast and efficient, for the use case where there are a large number of people involved, this is where the symmetric key approach starts to fall short.
In an asymmetric key encryption, there are two keys involved. These are referred to as public key and private key.
The magic in this is that the message encrypted by one of the keys can only be decrypted by the other associated key. This means that the message encrypted by the public key can only be decrypted by the corresponding private key and the message encrypted by the private key can only be decrypted by the corresponding public key.
Ideally, as the name suggests, the public key is supposed to be shared with everyone, while the private key is meant to be secret.
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