Secure communication over SSL/TLS

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is an encryption protocol designed to secure communications over the network. Netscape developed the SSL protocol in 1994. In 1999, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) released the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, superseding SSL protocol version 3. SSL is now considered insecure because of multiple vulnerabilities identified over the years. The POODLE and BEAST vulnerabilities, which we will discuss further in later sections, expose flaws in the SSL protocol itself and hence cannot be fixed with a software patch. SSL was declared deprecated by the IETF, and upgrading to TLS was suggested as the protocol to use for secure communications. The most recent version of TLS is version 1.2. We always recommend that you use the latest version of TLS and avoid allowing connections from clients using older versions or the SSL protocol.

Most websites have migrated to and have started using the TLS protocol, but the encrypted...