To my understanding, the DHKE algorithm is symmetric since it only produces a shared secret, rather than public and private keys, however googling "is diffie hellman asymmetric?" results in the following:
Based on public key cryptography, the D-H algorithm is a method for securely exchanging a shared key between two parties over an untrusted network. It is an asymmetric cipher used by several protocols including SSL, SSH, and IPSec.
Wikipedia is particularly confusing. I've highlighted key phrases (no pun intended) as to why...
DH is one of the earliest practical examples of public key exchange implemented within the field of cryptography. Published in 1976 by Diffie and Hellman, this is the earliest publicly known work that proposed the idea of a private key and a corresponding public key.
The Diffie–Hellman key exchange method allows two parties that have no prior knowledge of each other to jointly establish a shared secret key over an insecure channel. This key can then be used to encrypt subsequent communications using a symmetric-key cipher.
It is also possible to use Diffie–Hellman as part of a public key infrastructure, allowing Bob to encrypt a message so that only Alice will be able to decrypt it, with no prior communication between them other than Bob having trusted knowledge of Alice's public key. Alice's public key is (Ga mod p, g, p). To send her a message, Bob chooses a random b and then sends Alice Gb mod p (unencrypted) together with the message encrypted with symmetric key (Ga)b mod p. Only Alice can determine the symmetric key and hence decrypt the message because only she has a (the private key). A pre-shared public key also prevents man-in-the-middle attacks.
In practice, Diffie–Hellman is not used in this way, with RSA being the dominant public key algorithm. This is largely for historical and commercial reasons, namely that RSA Security created a certificate authority for key signing that became Verisign. Diffie–Hellman, as elaborated above, cannot directly be used to sign certificates. However, the ElGamal and DSA signature algorithms are mathematically related to it, as well as MQV, STS and the IKE component of the IPsec protocol suite for securing Internet Protocol communications.
There's a lot in there relating to Public/Private vs. Secret key, and Asymmstric vs. Symmetric, so I'm looking for some definitive information as to exactly what DHKE is.
Thank you.