Can someone please explain to me the concept of Perfect Forward Secrecy?
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Perfect Forward Secrecy
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Please someone fact check me here, but I believe PFS is similar to elliptic curve cryptography. Basically it means that if your "keys" (shared secret or certificates) get loose down the road, without PFS an attacker could use past captured packets and decrypt data.
On the flip side, if someone IS using PFS and the keys get loose, past captured data streams remain securely encrypted.
Regards,
Adam Tyler -
Razmik,
I hope all is well. As Adam (the other Adam) has correctly described, Perfect Forward Secrecy is a feature of specific key agreement protocols that gives assurances your session keys will not be compromised even if the private key of the server is compromised. By generating a unique session key for every session a user initiates, even the compromise of a single session key will not affect any data other than that exchanged in the specific session protected by that particular key.
Great question by the way !! & Thank you to Adam Tyler for jumping in with a great answer. :)
Cheers,
Adam