scope:

Traditional finite-field-based Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange during the Transport Layer Security (TLS) handshake suffers from a number of security, interoperability, and efficiency shortcomings. These shortcomings arise from lack of clarity about which DH group parameters TLS servers should offer and clients should accept. This document offers a solution to these shortcomings for compatible peers by using a section of the TLS "Supported Groups Registry" (renamed from "EC Named Curve Registry" by this document) to establish common finite field DH parameters with known structure and a mechanism for peers to negotiate support for these groups.

This document updates TLS versions 1.0 (RFC 2246), 1.1 (RFC 4346), and 1.2 (RFC 5246), as well as the TLS Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) extensions (RFC 4492).