Diffie-Hellman images

It's Very Clever

There is more computation in actual practice, but this example, which uses tiny numbers to illustrate the concept, shows a very clever mathematical approach. Each party raises the common number, which is 2 in this example (this has nothing to do with binary-- it is just the number "2") to a random power and sends the result to the other. The received number is raised to the same random power. Note that both parties come up with the same secret key, which was never transmitted intact.

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