Applications of RSA, Digital Certificate, SSS to Enable Multi-Level Decryption and Private Key Sharing

Jaehyeon Yoon

Abstract

RSA, Digital Certificate, and SSS (Shamir’s Secret Sharing) are some of the most widely used methods of encrypting and decrypting data in current days. RSA encrypts and decrypts data using a mathematical characteristic of prime numbers: it is extremely difficult to prime factorize large numbers. Digital Certificate is the applied version of RSA and is used to prove one’s identification. In addition, SSS encrypts and decrypts data using a characteristic of a polynomial graph: the only way to model the exact graph is to know the coordinate values of the k+1 number of points on the graph when it is in kth degree.

However, despite the simplicity in their mathematical mechanism, they come short in some aspects which may be crucial for modern data encryption and decryption applications. For instance, Digital Certificates cannot be used to validate digital identities of more than one person. Also the traditional form of SSS is extremely inefficient as it requires a new complex encryption process to be performed for every single piece of new data, especially when encrypting a long sentence or a large number.

This paper details the process in which the traditional RSA, SSS and digital certificate work. This paper also will detail how the two major shortcomings of them were resolved as well as functioning codes in which the two new implementations were tested of their functionality.

Please click to read the paper.