What does the key exchange process involve?

The key exchange process is crucial in establishing secure communications over an insecure channel. Its primary aim is to allow two parties to share a secret key that can be used for symmetric encryption while ensuring that the key remains confidential and inaccessible to potential eavesdroppers.

When the process involves sending and receiving public keys, it leverages asymmetric cryptography principles. In this context, each party generates a pair of keys: a public key, which is shared openly, and a private key, which remains confidential. When a sender wants to communicate securely with a recipient, they encrypt information using the recipient's public key. Only the recipient can decrypt this information using their private key, ensuring that the communication remains secure from third parties.

This method of using public keys for key exchange is foundational in protocols like RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) and Diffie-Hellman. This is why sending and receiving public keys for communication is considered a valid and reliable approach in the key exchange process.