The document summarizes the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm. It was the first publicly announced asymmetric key algorithm described by Diffie and Hellman in 1976. It allows two parties that have no prior knowledge of each other to jointly establish a shared secret key over an insecure communications channel. This key can then be used to encrypt subsequent communications using a symmetric key cipher. The algorithm is limited to key exchange and does not perform any authentication itself.