The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Secure communications over insecure channels
Open accessAbstract
According to traditional conceptions of cryptographic security, it is necessary to transmit a key, by secret means, before encrypted massages can be sent securely. This paper shows that it is possible to select a key over open communications channels in such a fashion that communications security can be maintained. A method is described which forces any enemy to expend an amount of work which increases as the square of the work required of the two communicants to select the key. The method provides a logically new kind of protection against the passive eavesdropper. It suggests that further research on this topic will be highly rewarding, both in a theoretical and a practical sense.
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“it has its privacy roots in the 1970s by the introduction of Diffie-Hellman k ey-exchange p rotocol t hat a llows u sers protect their privacy in the digital environment using public key cryptography [64].”
From A Survey of Self-Sovereign Identity Ecosystem (2021) · cites this paper as [64]
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Citations
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Metadata
- Authors
- Merkle, R. C.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Corresponding author
- Merkle, Ralph C.
- Venue
- Communications of the ACM
- Published
- 1978-04
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 294-299
- ISSN
- 0001-0782 (ISSN-L)
- 1557-7317
- OpenAlex
- W2047925852
- Cited by
- 757
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 35 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 49 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 27 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 10.92
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Communications of the ACM (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Cryptography and Data Security
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Advanced Authentication Protocols Security
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics › Coding theory and cryptography
- Keywords
- key establishment, secure communication, eavesdropping, passive attacks, cryptographic security, computational complexity
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