Key encapsulation mechanism

In <a href="/facts/Cryptography/e94PEVau">cryptography</a>, a key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) is a <a href="/facts/Public-key_cryptography/gowoFTxS">public-key cryptosystem</a> that allows a sender to generate a short secret key and transmit it to a receiver securely, in spite of <a href="/facts/Network_eavesdropping/9G5fTpMm">eavesdropping</a> and <a href="/facts/Man-in-the-middle_attack/dx4cojdz">intercepting</a> adversaries. Modern standards for <a href="/facts/Public-key_encryption/gowoFTxS">public-key encryption</a> of arbitrary messages are usually based on KEMs.
A KEM allows a sender who knows a public key to simultaneously generate a short random secret key and an encapsulation or ciphertext of the secret key by the KEM's encapsulation algorithm.
The receiver who knows the private key corresponding to the public key can recover the same random secret key from the encapsulation by the KEM's decapsulation algorithm.
The security goal of a KEM is to prevent anyone who does not know the private key from recovering any information about the encapsulated secret keys, even after eavesdropping or submitting other encapsulations to the receiver to study how the receiver reacts.

Key encapsulation mechanism open-in-new

Key encapsulation mechanism