~ Diffie-Hellman key exchange

Diffie-Hellman is a method of exchanging cryptographic keys through a public domain, with no prior shared knowledge between the client and the server. In fact, the two parties are actually not sharing keys, but creating a new one together.

The standard Diffie-Hellman works as follows1:

This process works because modulo exponents behave in the following way:

$$(g^a \mod p)^b \mod p = g^{ab} \mod p$$

$$(g^b \mod p)^a \mod p = g^{ba} \mod p$$

Meaning Alice and Bob end up with the same number. Note also that the only numbers that are visible to the public domain are $p$, $g$, $A$ and $B$ - none of which a malicious actor could use to get the final key (at least not without brute forcing it, which is why $p$ needs to be large).

As an alternative to the regular Diffie-Hellmann, one can exchange the modulo formula with an elliptic curve to get the Elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

1

Computerphile, & Pound, M. (2017). Diffie Hellman -the Mathematics bit- Computerphile. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjrfm_oRO0w

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