I have been asked by my client to encrypt some data using RSA with symmetric keys. All I know about RSA is that it is used as an asymmetric key algorithm. I have searched for anything like that and find none. So is it possible? If yes, is there an java implementation (JCE provider) of it?
Thanks in advance.
What your client probably means is a Key Transport Protocol based on RSA, using the RSA asymmetric keys to "wrap" a symmetric key for a symmetric Cipher that would be used to encrypt further messages between the two communication parties. See RFC5990 for the example of RSA-KEM. As Prabath already pointed out, RSA is also commonly used in SSL/TLS for exchanging a symmetric key.
If that’s not what he means, then I would gently ignore him and try to convince him that he should leave security decisions to people that have a better understanding of the material, because there is no such thing as a symmetric RSA key.