Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH)

Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) is a key exchange algorithm used in public key cryptography to allow two parties to establish a shared secret over an insecure communication channel.

ECDH works by each party generating a pair of public and private keys using elliptic curve cryptography. The public keys are exchanged, and each party combines the other party’s public key with its own private key to generate a shared secret that can be used for encryption and decryption of messages.

The security of ECDH is based on the computational difficulty of solving the discrete logarithm problem on elliptic curves. The strength of the algorithm depends on the size and choice of the elliptic curve, as well as the key size used for encryption.

ECDH is widely used in various applications, including secure messaging, virtual private networks, and digital signatures, among others.

Key establishment protocol

The following example illustrates how a shared key is established. Suppose Alice wants to establish a shared key with Bob, but the only channel available for them may be eavesdropped by a third party. Initially, the domain parameters (that is, in the prime case or in the binary case) must be agreed upon. Also, each party must have a key pair suitable for elliptic curve cryptography, consisting of a private key (a randomly selected integer in the interval ) and a public key represented by a point (where , that is, the result of adding  to itself  times). Let Alice’s key pair be and Bob’s key pair be . Each party must know the other party’s public key prior to execution of the protocol.

Alice computes point . Bob computes point . The shared secret is  (the x coordinate of the point). Most standardized protocols based on ECDH derive a symmetric key from  using some hash-based key derivation function.

The shared secret calculated by both parties is equal, because .

The only information about her key that Alice initially exposes is her public key. So, no party except Alice can determine Alice’s private key (Alice of course knows it by having selected it), unless that party can solve the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. Bob’s private key is similarly secure. No party other than Alice or Bob can compute the shared secret, unless that party can solve the elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman problem.

The public keys are either static (and trusted, say via a certificate) or ephemeral (also known as ECDHE, where final ‘E’ stands for “ephemeral”). Ephemeral keys are temporary and not necessarily authenticated, so if authentication is desired, authenticity assurances must be obtained by other means. Authentication is necessary to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks. If one of either Alice’s or Bob’s public keys is static, then man-in-the-middle attacks are thwarted. Static public keys provide neither forward secrecy nor key-compromise impersonation resilience, among other advanced security properties. Holders of static private keys should validate the other public key, and should apply a secure key derivation function to the raw Diffie–Hellman shared secret to avoid leaking information about the static private key.

If Alice maliciously chooses invalid curve points for her key and Bob does not validate that Alice’s points are part of the selected group, she can collect enough residues of Bob’s key to derive his private key. Several TLS libraries were found to be vulnerable to this attack.

The shared secret is uniformly distributed on a subset of of size . For this reason, the secret should not be used directly as a symmetric key, but it can be used as entropy for a key derivation function.

 

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