Technically, either side can request that the other generate a key and use that one, and it will cost an additional round trip. But generally in practice, each side generates their own key and tells the other side that it will be using that key.
Yes, those keys are for symmetric encryption, and yes, it’s for performance. It’s way faster to just exchange keys with asymmetric encryption rather than do the whole stream.
Also, I think you meant SSL, not SSH. SSH Uses a different key exchange protocol.
Not that it really matters to this conversation but seems like you would know, so I’ll ask because I’m curious…
Is that randomly generated per session key generated by the remote host ssh server? Is it a symmetric key (maybe for performance purposes)?
Technically, either side can request that the other generate a key and use that one, and it will cost an additional round trip. But generally in practice, each side generates their own key and tells the other side that it will be using that key.
Yes, those keys are for symmetric encryption, and yes, it’s for performance. It’s way faster to just exchange keys with asymmetric encryption rather than do the whole stream.
Also, I think you meant SSL, not SSH. SSH Uses a different key exchange protocol.
I love cryptography. :)