TLS: What Happens Before the Padlock
by Froga
The handshake behind every HTTPS connection — what each side sends, how a shared key appears without ever crossing the wire, and what the padlock does and does not promise.
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Each side contributes a key share, and both derive the same secret from the pair. The session key is never transmitted, so an attacker who records the whole handshake still cannot reconstruct it — and, crucially, cannot decrypt it later even if the server's long-term private key is stolen afterwards. That property is called forward secrecy.
During a TLS handshake, how does the client and server end up with the same symmetric session key?
multiple choice
Each side sends a key share, and both compute the same key from them; the key itself is never sent
The server generates the key and sends it to the client encrypted
The client generates the key and sends it in the ClientHello
Both sides look it up from the certificate
If the key crossed the wire at all, what would recording the connection let an attacker do later?
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