Comparison of Time Complexity of Symmetric and Asymmetric Key Cryptographic Algorithms

Abstract

Information security is the most important as well as the most challenging aspect when considered for internet and network applications. Since internet and network applications are growing very fast so it has become very important to provide necessary protection to the data against the attackers and that too in time. The intruders may use the data being sent for fraudulent purposes. So in order to reduce data loss and pilfering, data privacy requires more attention. Cryptography is one of the popular means of protecting information in order to achieve confidentiality, integrity, authentication, non-repudiation, access control and availability. Cryptography is a main aspect of computer security that converts data from its actual form into an unreadable form. The two main characteristics that identify and differentiate one algorithm from another are its ability to secure the protected data against attacks and its speed and efficiency in doing so. The two widely accepted and used categories of cryptographic algorithms to protect information using the desired key are symmetric and asymmetric. Asymmetric algorithms have been analyzed by researchers to be stronger compared to Symmetric algorithms but has higher time complexity. AES belongs to the category of symmetric key cryptography and RSA belongs to the category of asymmetric key cryptography. This paper comprises of brief description of AES and RSA cryptographic algorithms. Also a theoretical as well as a practical performance analysis and comparison of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography has been provided. The comparison is made on the basis of speed, key size and time complexity. A website has been developed using Bootstrap and PHP to execute the codes.