Can anyone tell me where to get an explanation of public and private key encryption?

Question

I don't mean how they work as a pair, one being public and the other being private and only the private one will decrypt the encoded message etc. I mean HOW can they work as a pair? Is there a simple example of exactly what might happen?

Thanks James Y, but that is what I already know. I want to get a feel for what it all really means. e.g. Take a secret message "Easter" and use the key "bunny" to translate Easter into "Gvghdt" (assuming I got that right).. But how does that translate to TWO keys?

Answer 1

A cryptographic system that uses two keys -- a public key known to everyone and a private or secret key known only to the recipient of the message. When John wants to send a secure message to Jane, he uses Jane's public key to encrypt the message. Jane then uses her private key to decrypt it.
An important element to the public key system is that the public and private keys are related in such a way that only the public key can be used to encrypt messages and only the corresponding private key can be used to decrypt them. Moreover, it is virtually impossible to deduce the private key if you know the public key.

Public-key systems, such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), are becoming popular for transmitting information via the Internet. They are extremely secure and relatively simple to use. The only difficulty with public-key systems is that you need to know the recipient's public key to encrypt a message for him or her. What's needed, therefore, is a global registry of public keys, which is one of the promises of the new LDAP technology.

Answer 2

once you furnish the assistance, and part of it truly is sending the password (e.g logging in Yahoo! account), encryption makes it in simple terms so people is honestly no longer waiting to analyze the password in the journey that they ensue to intercept it( hackers attempt this). Its like a coded puzzle.