Appendix B. How the RSA Cipher Works

In order to appreciate the inner workings of a cryptographic system, such as RSA, it is helpful to see a simple implementation in code. This appendix provides some insight into the workings of the RSA algorithm, but it is not entirely necessary for those with a purely pragmatic interest in applying existing cryptographic solutions, such as the security and cryptographic classes in the .NET Framework. However, even pragmatists may benefit from a background understanding of the algorithms that they use.

This appendix provides an example program that explores the inner workings of the RSA algorithm named BigRSA , which is a multiprecision implementation. You will probably never implement your own RSA algorithm like this from scratch, since most cryptographic libraries, including the .NET Security Framework, provide excellent implementations . This example is provided purely for deeper understanding.