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Authentication
This is the technique by which a process verifies that its
communication partner is who it is believed to be and not an
imposter.
- This turns out to be one of the trickiest problems in
cryptography.
- Can be done if both parties share a common secret key or keys,
however...
- Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol can be
used to establish shared secret keys but is complex and
unwieldy.
- More usefully, trusted Key Distribution
Centres perform this function.
- It is possible to establish authentication using a
public key system.
Two parties who wish to communicate securely can use public key
cryptography to establish a session key, useful
for a single transaction. This is useful since single key
cryptography is much faster than public key cryptography.
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