An Asynchronous Enhanced Shared Secret Provisioning Protocol (ESSPP)
provides a novel method and system for adding devices to a network in a
secure manner. A registration process is launched by at least one of two
network devices together. These two devices then automatically register
with each other. When two devices running Asynchronous ESSPP detect each
other, they exchange identities and establish a key that can later be
used by the devices to mutually authenticate each other and generate
session encryption keys. An out-of-band examination of registration
signatures generated at the two devices can be performed to help ensure
that there was not a man-in-the-middle attacker involved in the key
exchange.