(VB.NET UWP/WinRT) Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (DH)

Diffie-Hellman key exchange (DH) is a cryptographic protocol that allows two parties that have no prior knowledge of each other to jointly establish a shared secret key.

This example demonstrates how two parties (Alice and Bob) can compute an N-bit shared secret key without the key ever being transmitted.

Chilkat Universal Windows Platform (UWP) / WinRT Downloads Chilkat for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP)

' This example requires the Chilkat API to have been previously unlocked.
' See Global Unlock Sample for sample code.

' Create two separate instances of the DH object.
Dim dhBob As New Chilkat.Dh
Dim dhAlice As New Chilkat.Dh


' The DH algorithm begins with a large prime, P, and a generator, G.  
' These don't have to be secret, and they may be transmitted over an insecure channel.  
' The generator is a small integer and typically has the value 2 or 5.

' The Chilkat DH component provides the ability to use known
' "safe" primes, as well as a method to generate new safe primes.

' This example will use a known safe prime.  Generating
' new safe primes is a time-consuming CPU intensive task
' and is normally done offline.

' Bob will choose to use the 2nd of our 8 pre-chosen safe primes.  
' It is the Prime for the 2nd Oakley Group (RFC 2409) -- 
' 1024-bit MODP Group.  Generator is 2. 
' The prime is: 2^1024 - 2^960 - 1 + 2^64 * { [2^894 pi] + 129093 }
dhBob.UseKnownPrime(2)

' The computed shared secret will be equal to the size of the prime (in bits).
' In this case the prime is 1024 bits, so the shared secret will be 128 bytes (128 * 8 = 1024).
' However, the result is returned as an SSH1-encoded bignum in hex string format.
' The SSH1-encoding prepends a 2-byte count, so the result is going  to be 2 bytes
' longer: 130 bytes.  This results in a hex string that is 260 characters long (two chars
' per byte for the hex encoding).

Dim p As String
Dim g As Integer
' Bob will now send P and G to Alice.
p = dhBob.P
g = dhBob.G

' Alice calls SetPG to set P and G.  SetPG checks
' the values to make sure it's a safe prime and will
' return False if not.
Dim success As Boolean = dhAlice.SetPG(p,g)
If (success <> True) Then
    Debug.WriteLine("P is not a safe prime")
    Exit Sub
End If


' Each side begins by generating an "E"
' value.  The CreateE method has one argument: numBits.
' It should be set to twice the size of the number of bits
' in the session key.

' Let's say we want to generate a 128-bit session key
' for AES encryption.  The shared secret generated by the Diffie-Hellman
' algorithm will be longer, so we'll hash the result to arrive at the
' desired session key length.  However, the length of the session
' key we'll utlimately produce determines the value that should be
' passed to the CreateE method.

' In this case, we'll be creating a 128-bit session key, so pass 256 to CreateE.
' This setting is for security purposes only -- the value
' passed to CreateE does not change the length of the shared secret
' that is produced by Diffie-Hellman.  
' Also, there is no need to pass in a value larger
' than 2 times the expected session key length.  It suffices to
' pass exactly 2 times the session key length.

' Bob generates a random E (which has the mathematical
' properties required for DH).
Dim eBob As String
eBob = dhBob.CreateE(256)

' Alice does the same:
Dim eAlice As String
eAlice = dhAlice.CreateE(256)

' The "E" values are sent over the insecure channel.
' Bob sends his "E" to Alice, and Alice sends her "E" to Bob.

' Each side computes the shared secret by calling FindK.
' "K" is the shared-secret.

Dim kBob As String
Dim kAlice As String

' Bob computes the shared secret from Alice's "E":
kBob = dhBob.FindK(eAlice)

' Alice computes the shared secret from Bob's "E":
kAlice = dhAlice.FindK(eBob)

' Amazingly, kBob and kAlice are identical and the expected
' length (260 characters).  The strings contain the hex encoded bytes of
' our shared secret:
Debug.WriteLine("Bob's shared secret:")
Debug.WriteLine(kBob)
Debug.WriteLine("Alice's shared secret (should be equal to Bob's)")
Debug.WriteLine(kAlice)

' To arrive at a 128-bit session key for AES encryption, Bob and Alice should
' both transform the raw shared secret using a hash algorithm that produces
' the size of session key desired.   MD5 produces a 16-byte (128-bit) result, so
' this is a good choice for 128-bit AES.

' To produce the session key:
Dim crypt As New Chilkat.Crypt2

crypt.EncodingMode = "hex"
crypt.HashAlgorithm = "md5"

Dim sessionKey As String
sessionKey = crypt.HashStringENC(kBob)

Debug.WriteLine("128-bit Session Key:")
Debug.WriteLine(sessionKey)

' Encrypt something...
crypt.CryptAlgorithm = "aes"
crypt.KeyLength = 128
crypt.CipherMode = "cbc"

' Use an IV that is the MD5 hash of the session key...
Dim iv As String
iv = crypt.HashStringENC(sessionKey)

' AES uses a 16-byte IV:
Debug.WriteLine("Initialization Vector:")
Debug.WriteLine(iv)

crypt.SetEncodedKey(sessionKey,"hex")
crypt.SetEncodedIV(iv,"hex")

' Encrypt some text:
Dim cipherText64 As String

crypt.EncodingMode = "base64"
cipherText64 = crypt.EncryptStringENC("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog")
Debug.WriteLine(cipherText64)

Dim plainText As String
plainText = crypt.DecryptStringENC(cipherText64)

Debug.WriteLine(plainText)