In the past month or so, Library IT received several reports from users who have received an error message about a weak Diffie-Hellman key when attempting to get to various websites. As a temporary solution at the time, it was suggested to use an alternate browser. Bob Rice investigated this more closely and has implemented a fix so this error message shouldn’t surface for us again.
If you’re curious about what it is, a quick summary is the Diffie-Hellman key is a fairly basic tool used in cryptography based off of modular arithmetic. It allows for the development of a secure key based on two weak keys supplied by either side of an exchange and is used to secure a variety of Internet services. For those who are really interested in learning more about modern cryptography, feel free to view this informational video: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography/modern-crypt/v/diffie-hellman-key-exchange-part-2.
For comments or questions, write to any of us in LIT, or to libraryit@yale.edu.