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Sanjay Ghosh
Sanjay Ghosh

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Cipher Suite Explained Component by Component

Key Exchange

How the keys are exchanged.
Example :DH,DHE (Diffie Hillman Ephamarel 1.e short lived), ADH(Anonymous DH), ECDHE (Eliptic curve ), RSA

Authentication

This is digital signature algorithm. This is needed to confirm if the client is sending to the correct server. Server sends the certificate back to the client (That certificate contains the public key).
Examples : RSA, ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm )

Bulk Encryption Cipher

It is used to encrypt the data being sent.
There are 2 kinds of Bult Ciphers:

  1. Stream Cipher: A stream cipher, which operates on data 1 byte at a time, converts a key to a keystream to encrypt data and produce ciphertext. The remote end converts the shared key to the same keystream and decrypts the plaintext data.
  2. Block Cipher: A block cipher operates on data in groups (or blocks) of bytes. Stream ciphers perform better than block ciphers. However, block ciphers provide better security. DES (56-bit), Triple-Data Encryption Standard (TDES) (168-bit), and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) are the most common block ciphers. DES and TDES operate on blocks of 8 bytes at a time. AES operates on blocks of 16 bytes at a time.

Example: AES (Advanced Encryption Standard).
Refer

Hash or MAC

MAC (Message Authentication Code) : This is to verify the legitimacy of data sent. This is to make sure message sent is not altered or tamperd and data integrity is maintained.
Refer

Example : SHA, MD5

Top comments (2)

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luftietheanonymous profile image
Luftie The Anonymous • Edited

It's basically like a stack for web browsers apps e.g. React, Typescript, Shadcnx, Node.js/ts.
Each component plays it's own role in the ecosystem. Thank you for the article sir.

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sanjayghosh profile image
Sanjay Ghosh

Thank you