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Concept
Secure channel
Summary
In cryptography, a secure channel is a means of data transmission that is resistant to overhearing and tampering. A confidential channel is a means of data transmission that is resistant to overhearing, or eavesdropping (e.g., reading the content), but not necessarily resistant to tampering (i.e., manipulating the content). An authentic channel is a means of data transmission that is resistant to tampering but not necessarily resistant to overhearing.
In contrast to a secure channel, an insecure channel is unencrypted and may be subject to eavesdropping and tampering. Secure communications are possible over an insecure channel if the content to be communicated is encrypted prior to transmission.
There are no perfectly secure channels in the real world. There are, at best, only ways to make insecure channels (e.g., couriers, homing pigeons, diplomatic bags, etc.) less insecure: padlocks (between courier wrists and a briefcase), loyalty tests, security investigations, and guns for courier personnel, diplomatic immunity for diplomatic bags, and so forth.
In 1976, two researchers proposed a key exchange technique (now named after them)—Diffie–Hellman key exchange (D-H). This protocol allows two parties to generate a key only known to them, under the assumption that a certain mathematical problem (e.g., the Diffie–Hellman problem in their proposal) is computationally infeasible (i.e., very very hard) to solve, and that the two parties have access to an authentic channel. In short, that an eavesdropper—conventionally termed 'Eve', who can listen to all messages exchanged by the two parties, but who can not modify the messages—will not learn the exchanged key. Such a key exchange was impossible with any previously known cryptographic schemes based on symmetric ciphers, because with these schemes it is necessary that the two parties exchange a secret key at some prior time, hence they require a confidential channel at that time which is just what we are attempting to build.
Official source
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