Comparison of Symmetric and Asymmetric Cryptography With Existing Vulnerabilities and Countermeasures

Internet and networks application are growing very fast, so the need to protect such application are increased by using cryptographic methods. The two widely accepted and used cryptographic methods are symmetric and asymmetric. The DES ideally 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 RSA and DES cryptography algorithms and their existing vulnerabilities along with their countermeasures. Besides this, there is a theoretical performance analysis and comparisons of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography.