Diffie-Hellman (Dh) Key Groups; Perfect Forward Secrecy (Pfs); Configuring Advanced Ike Settings - ZyXEL Communications P-662H-61 User Manual

16.12.2 Diffie-Hellman (DH) Key Groups

Diffie-Hellman (DH) is a public-key cryptography protocol that allows two parties to establish
a shared secret over an unsecured communications channel. Diffie-Hellman is used within
IKE SA setup to establish session keys. 768-bit (Group 1 - DH1) and 1024-bit (Group 2 –
DH2) Diffie-Hellman groups are supported. Upon completion of the Diffie-Hellman
exchange, the two peers have a shared secret, but the IKE SA is not authenticated. For
authentication, use pre-shared keys.

16.12.3 Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS)

Enabling PFS means that the key is transient. The key is thrown away and replaced by a brand
new key using a new Diffie-Hellman exchange for each new IPSec SA setup. With PFS
enabled, if one key is compromised, previous and subsequent keys are not compromised,
because subsequent keys are not derived from previous keys. The (time-consuming) Diffie-
Hellman exchange is the trade-off for this extra security.
This may be unnecessary for data that does not require such security, so PFS is disabled
(None) by default in the ZyXEL Device. Disabling PFS means new authentication and
encryption keys are derived from the same root secret (which may have security implications
in the long run) but allows faster SA setup (by bypassing the Diffie-Hellman key exchange).

16.13 Configuring Advanced IKE Settings

Use this screen to configure advanced IKE settings. Click Advanced in the
screen to open this screen.
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