On: The Internet's Secret Back Door

[jacobolus]

Except, not necessarily, no. Sorry, my grandparent post should have been clearer that using a public-key method is only one of the ways to do authentication in SSL/TLS. Either way, some symmetric cipher is used for all the content.

See: http://www.ipa.go.jp/security/rfc/RFC2246-AFEN.html

Search down for Diffie-Hellman.

The Wikipedia article might also be useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie-Hellman_key_exchange