A method and apparatus that uses the dynamics of chaotic systems for the remote generation of a digital key, for use in any encryption algorithm. After initialization, the dynamics of a chaotic system are allowed to generate the 0 and 1 bits of a key bitstream. An initialization bitstream is transmitted, using conventional transmission technologies, to an identical chaotic system. This chaotic system is driven into synchrony and allowed to generate a key bitstream, which is identical to the other bitstream because the chaotic systems have been synchronized.