Merkle Puzzles (Formula)
Merkle Puzzles
1975 AD
An early public-key protocol devised by Ralph Merkle.
Suppose Alice (A) and Bob (B) want to exchange information and need to generate a key for encrypting that information..
Further suppose that that Eve (E) is attempting to eavesdrop..
The essential insight to Merkle, stated in his own words, is
The conclusion we reach is that neither A nor B attempts to transmit the key to the other. They must both participate in a process of key selection. Intuitively, we can justify this decision by the following consideration. There is some random information mown to A, and some random information mown to B. A must guess at B' s random information, and B must guess at A's random information. E however, must guess at the random information of both A and B. Thus, E has a harder problem than that of either A or B.
Events (1)
for
crypto
