Crypto: ECDH

The ECDH sample shows how to perform an Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman key exchange to allow two parties to obtain a shared secret.

Requirements

The sample supports the following development kits:

Hardware platforms

PCA

Board name

Board target

nRF9161 DK

PCA10153

nrf9161dk

nrf9161dk/nrf9161/ns nrf9161dk/nrf9161

nRF9160 DK

PCA10090

nrf9160dk

nrf9160dk/nrf9160/ns nrf9160dk/nrf9160

nRF9151 DK

PCA10171

nrf9151dk

nrf9151dk/nrf9151/ns nrf9151dk/nrf9151

nRF54L15 PDK

PCA10156

nrf54l15pdk

nrf54l15pdk/nrf54l15/cpuapp

nRF54L15 DK

PCA10156

nrf54l15dk

nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp/ns nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp

nRF54H20 DK

PCA10175

nrf54h20dk

nrf54h20dk/nrf54h20/cpuapp

nRF5340 DK

PCA10095

nrf5340dk

nrf5340dk/nrf5340/cpuapp/ns nrf5340dk/nrf5340/cpuapp

nRF52840 DK

PCA10056

nrf52840dk

nrf52840dk/nrf52840

When built for a board target with the */ns variant, the sample is configured to compile and run as a non-secure application with Cortex-M Security Extensions enabled. Therefore, it automatically includes Trusted Firmware-M that prepares the required peripherals and secure services to be available for the application.

Overview

The sample performs the following operations:

  1. Initialization:

    1. The Platform Security Architecture (PSA) API is initialized.

    2. Two random Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) key pairs are generated and imported into the PSA crypto keystore.

  2. ECDH key exchange using the generated key pairs.

  3. Cleanup:

    1. The key pairs are removed from the PSA crypto keystore.

Building and running

This sample can be found under samples/crypto/ecdh in the nRF Connect SDK folder structure.

When built as firmware image for a board target with the */ns variant, the sample has Cortex-M Security Extensions (CMSE) enabled and separates the firmware between Non-Secure Processing Environment (NSPE) and Secure Processing Environment (SPE). Because of this, it automatically includes the Trusted Firmware-M (TF-M). To read more about CMSE, see Processing environments.

To build the sample, follow the instructions in Building an application for your preferred building environment. See also Programming an application for programming steps and Testing and optimization for general information about testing and debugging in the nRF Connect SDK.

Note

When building repository applications in the SDK repositories, building with sysbuild is enabled by default. If you work with out-of-tree freestanding applications, you need to manually pass the --sysbuild parameter to every build command or configure west to always use it.

Testing

After programming the sample to your development kit, complete the following steps to test it:

  1. Connect to the kit with a terminal emulator (for example, nRF Connect Serial Terminal). See Testing and optimization for the required settings and steps.

  2. Compile and program the application.

  3. Observe the logs from the application using a terminal emulator.