From the course: CISSP Cert Prep (2021): 3 Security Architecture and Engineering

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Key exchange

Key exchange

- [Instructor] As we've discussed, every encryption algorithm relies upon the use of encryption and decryption keys. And it's critical to keep some of those keys secret. In the case of symmetric encryption, the sender and receivers share a single secret key that nobody else should know. Before the sender and receiver can begin to communicate using a symmetric algorithm. They must somehow agree upon and exchange the shared secret key that they're going to use for that communication session. If you stop and think about it for a moment, this can be a real challenge. Let's say that Alice and Bob would like the ability to communicate secretly with each other. They hope to achieve two of the goals of cryptography. Confidentiality for their communications and an assurance of authentication that they are really talking to each other. How can they exchange an encryption key? Alice might go ahead and randomly select a secret key,…

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