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Forward Secrecy

Definition

Forward Secrecy is a property of secure communication protocols that ensures past session keys remain secure even if the long-term private key of one participant is compromised in the future. This security attribute prevents an attacker who records encrypted communications and later obtains a private key from decrypting historical data. It provides an additional layer of protection, limiting the impact of a key compromise to only future communications. The mechanism typically relies on ephemeral session keys that are not derivable from the long-term key.