Bilateral key exchange (BKE) was an encryption scheme utilized by the

Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIFT, ...

(SWIFT). The scheme was retired on January 1, 2009 and has now been replaced by the

Relationship Management Application Relationship Management Application (RMA) is a service provided by SWIFT to manage the business relationships between financial institutions. RMA operates by managing which message types are permitted to be exchanged between users of a SWIFT serv ...

(RMA). All key management is now based on the SWIFT PKI that was implemented in SWIFT phase two. A bilateral key allowed secure communication across the SWIFT Network. The text of a SWIFT message and the authentication key were used to generate a

message authentication code In cryptography, a message authentication code (MAC), sometimes known as a ''tag'', is a short piece of information used for authenticating a message. In other words, to confirm that the message came from the stated sender (its authenticity) and ...

or MAC. The MAC ensured the origin of a message and the authenticity of the message contents. This was normally accomplished by the exchange of various SWIFT messages used specifically for establishing a communicating key pair. BKE keys were generated either manually inside the SWIFT software, or automatically with the use of a secure card reader (SCR). Since 1994, the keys used in the card reader and the authentication keys themselves were 1,024 bit RSA.

References

Cryptographic protocols Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication {{crypto-stub