[plug] [semi-OT] Public/private keys?

[Andrew Furey]

Hi all,

Just a general question on the principals of public
key cryptography.

I understand that encrypting a document with the
private key can only be decrypted by the matching
public key, and vice versa. I don't necessarily
understand _how_ that works, but I'll take their word
for it :)

My question is, doesn't that mean that it would be
somehow possible to derive someone's private key from
their public one, using some sort of inverse function?
Presumably there must be checks in place to prevent
that, but how do they work?

Just curious
Andrew


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