Three-pass protocol

Article summary

In cryptography, a three-pass protocol for sending messages is a framework which allows one party to securely send a message to a second party without the need to exchange or distribute encryption keys. Such message protocols should not be confused with various other algorithms which use 3 passes for authentication. It is called a three-pass protocol because the sender and the receiver exchange three encrypted messages. The first three-pass protocol was developed by Adi Shamir circa 1980, and is described in more detail in a later section. The basic concept of the three-pass protocol is that each party has a private encryption key and a private decryption key. The two parties use their keys independently, first to encrypt the message, and then to decrypt the message. The protocol uses an encryption function E and a decryption function D. The encryption function uses an encryption key e to change a plaintext message m into an encrypted message, or ciphertext, . Corresponding to each encryption key e there is a decryption key d which allows the message to be recovered using the decryption function, . Sometimes the encryption function and decryption function are the same.…

Key claims

No claims recorded.

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

No sources recorded.