Editing Key-agreement protocol (section)

== Exponential key exchange ==

The first publicly known<ref name=":0">See [[Diffie–Hellman key exchange]] for a more complete history of both the secret and public development of public-key cryptography.</ref> public-key agreement protocol that meets the above criteria was the [[Diffie–Hellman key exchange]], in which two parties jointly [[Exponentiation|exponentiate]] a generator with random numbers, in such a way that an eavesdropper cannot feasibly determine what the resultant shared key is.

Exponential key agreement in and of itself does not specify any prior agreement or subsequent authentication between the participants.  It has thus been described as an anonymous key agreement protocol.