Creating the Master Key

A master key is key data material from which other keys are derived. Depending on the protocol and cipher suite used, the master key can be from 5 to 48 bytes in length. For the RSA/Schannel CSP, the master key is created by the client-side and transferred to the server in an RSA envelope. For a Diffie-Hellman/Schannel CSP, the master key is created by performing a Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

Code for creating and exchanging master keys is demonstrated in:

• Creating a Master Key: The RSA Client
• Creating a Master Key: The Diffie-Hellman Client
• Creating a Master Key: The RSA Server
• Creating a Master Key: The Diffie-Hellman Server
• Specifying the Algorithms