# Encrypting Arbitrary Data with Elliptic Curve ElGamal

DevFeed: [Encrypting Arbitrary Data with Elliptic Curve ElGamal](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/can-we-encrypt-data-using-elliptic-curves-27112.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://andrea.corbellini.name/2023/01/02/ec-encryption/>)

Author: andreacorbellini

Published: 2023-01-02T06:30:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Andrea Corbellini](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/andrea-corbellini.md>)

Topics: [Cryptography](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cryptography.md>), [Encryption](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/encryption.md>), [private key](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/private-key.md>), [public key](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/public-key.md>), [Provable security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/provable-security.md>)

Tags: [cryptography](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cryptography.md>), [ecc](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ecc.md>), [elgamal](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/elgamal.md>), [encryption](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/encryption.md>)

## AI overview

This tutorial explains that elliptic curve keys can encrypt arbitrary data directly and introduces elliptic curve ElGamal as an example. It also notes that pure elliptic curve encryption is not widely used or standardized because key agreement is more convenient for most applications.

## Source excerpt

From time to time, I hear people saying that Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) cannot be used to directly encrypt data, and you can only do key agreement and digital signatures with it. This is a common misconception, but it's not actually true: you can indeed use elliptic curve keys to encrypt arbitrary data. And I'm not talking about hybrid-encryption schemes (like ECIES ...