Internet Key Exchange

Internet Key Exchange (IKE or IKEv2) is the protocol used to set up a security association (SA) in the IPsec protocol suite. IKE uses a Diffie-Hellman key exchange to set up a shared session secret, from which cryptographic keys are derived. Public key techniques or, alternatively, a pre-shared key, are used to mutually authenticate the communicating parties.

IKE builds upon the Oakley protocol.

History

IKE was originally defined in November 1998 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in a series of publications (Request for Comments) known as RFC 2407, RFC 2408, and RFC 2409.

RFC 2407 defined The Internet IP Security Domain of Interpretation for ISAKMP. ^[1]
RFC 2408 Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP) ^[2]
RFC 2409 defined The Internet Key Exchange (IKE) ^[3]

IKE was updated to version two (IKEv2) in December 2005 by RFC 4306. ^[4] IKEv2 has been further expanded by RFC 4301 (Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol) through RFC 4310 (DNS Security Extensions Mapping for the EPP). More RFCs are being added all the time as the need arises to further develop the features of the protocol.

The parent organization of the IETF, The Internet Society (ISOC), has maintained the copyrights of these standards as being freely available to the Internet community.