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Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (DH)

See more Diffie-Hellman Examples

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.

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Dim success As Boolean
success = False

// 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 Int32
// 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.
success = dhAlice.SetPG(p,g)
If (success <> True) Then
    System.DebugLog("P is not a safe prime")
    Return
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:
System.DebugLog("Bob's shared secret:")
System.DebugLog(kBob)
System.DebugLog("Alice's shared secret (should be equal to Bob's)")
System.DebugLog(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)

System.DebugLog("128-bit Session Key:")
System.DebugLog(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:
System.DebugLog("Initialization Vector:")
System.DebugLog(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")
System.DebugLog(cipherText64)

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

System.DebugLog(plainText)