Problem description Part of the job of the study group will be to provide solid definitions. To get things started, we provide some straw-man definitions here. Such keys are often derived from a secret that a person remembers, whether in the form of a PIN code, password, or passphrase. An essential goal of these methods is to help prevent brute-force attack when the password space is small, or of indeterminate size, and thus potentially small. Key agreement is a mutual act that ends with both parties sharing a common session key, but not necessarily knowing that they share it.
Key confirmation refers to steps that both parties take to verify that they share the common key.
The scope may include protocols that don't explicitly include full mutual key confirmation. This may be desired and appropriate when the method is used in the scope of a larger system that provides the necessary confirmation. The standard must provide guidance in this regard. In the AT model the client has a password and the server has only a particular one-way function of this password. In the ST model the client and the server both have the same data, which itself may be derived from a one-way function of the password.