Systems and methods employing authenticated connections to a central server to establish and authenticate a peer-to-peer connection between peer devices. The invention circumvents the potential vulnerability of clear-text transmission of secrets through a series of encrypted data transfers. A secret key is encrypted and then transmitted from one peer device to another using authenticated connections to the server. The secret key is then used to transmit encrypted data over a peer connection between the peer devices for the purpose of authenticating the peer devices on each end of the connection.