1. The data transmitted across the network can be intentionally or unintentionally modified or manipulated hence it cannot be considered as secure
  2. Inadequate or weak encryption can lead to data breaches where an intruder can exploit prevailing vulnerabilities between server and client communications
  3. In weak encryption based attacks, an attacker can decrypt sensitive data using brute force attacks
  4. Weak encryption keys can allow attackers to perform reverse engineering, man-in-the-middle attacks, spoof content, phishing attacks

Encryption: Symmetric and Asymmetric Key

  • Encryption is a method of transforming plain text into something unintelligible (cipher) text in order to protect it from data compromise
  • Symmetric encryption (secret-key, shared-key, and private-key) uses the same key for encryption as it does for decryption
  • Asymmetric encryption (public-key) uses different encryption keys for encryption and decryption. These keys are known as public and private keys
  • In Java, a cipher object is created in the process of encryption and decryption with a specific algorithm such as DES for symmetric and RSA for asymmetric encryption
  • The javax.crypto package provides a framework for symmetric and asymmetric encryption with cipher implementations

Symmetric Encryption

Asymmetric Encryption