Name: encrypt using rsa

Type: command

Syntax: encrypt <message> using rsa with {public | private} key <key> [and passphrase <passphrase>]

Summary:

Encrypt data using the RSA algorithm.

Introduced: 4.6

OS: mac, windows, linux, ios, android

Platforms: desktop, server, mobile

Security: network

Example:

encrypt myMessage using rsa with public key myKey

Example:

encrypt thisMessage using rsa with private key privateKey

Parameters:

key:

The key to be used for the encryption, in PEM format

passphrase:

An optional passphrase

message:

The message to be encrypted

Description:

Use the <encrypt using rsa> command to encrypt a message using RSA

public key encryption.

To encode a message that you only want to be decoded by the holder of

the private key, use the form:

encrypt <message> with public key <key>

As a signing operation, to encode a message that a receiver can then verify

has come from one of the holders of the private key, use the form:

encrypt <message> with private key <key>

#### Generating key pairs

Public-private key pairs can be generated using the OpenSSL suite of

command-line tools. For example: openssl genrsa -out private_key.pem 512

openssl rsa -pubout -in private_key.pem -out public_key.pem

Will generate a key pair of size 512-bits, placing the private key in

private_key.pem and the public key in public_key.pem.

For more information on these utilities see

https://www.openssl.org/docs/manmaster/man1/rsa.html and

https://www.openssl.org/docs/manmaster/man1/genrsa.html.

>*Note:* The maximum length of a message that can be encrypted using

> RSA is the size of the key in bytes -11. So, for a 512-bit key pair,

> the maximum encryptable message size is 53 bytes.

For signing, the maximum length of an encryptable message isn't really

an issue since typically in that scenario it will be some sort of hash

that would be being encrypted. For the more traditional encrypting

scenario, however, the standard approach is to use public key

cryptography to encrypt a random password which is then used with a

symmetric cipher to actually encrypt the payload.

References: decrypt (command), encrypt (command),

decrypt using rsa (command)