HTTPS
To practically understand HTTPS, we will need to first talk about the TLS protocol. TLS is a protocol that can be utilized to encrypt data communicated over a computer network. TLS relies on two types of cryptography algorithms to achieve its goals—symmetric cryptography and public-key cryptography.
Note
Public-key cryptography is also known as asymmetrical cryptography. We will cover where the name came from shortly. On the other hand, symmetric cryptography can also be called symmetric-key algorithms.
Symmetric cryptography
The core idea of data encryption is the use of complex mathematical equations to encode (or cipher) data, which in effect will make this data unreadable to humans. In the world of secure software communication, the encrypted data can then be sent to the intended receiver, which will be expected to decrypt the data back to its original human-readable form.
In almost all cases, to encrypt a piece of data, you will need an encryption key. Encryption keys are simply a...