Learning Secure Socket Layer

SSL offers a security layer for communications over networks. SSL itself is a very generic standard for encrypting any form of communication. It is usually used for securing network connections to prevent messages from being modified and / or eavesdropped. We'll use it for securing TCP sockets, and show how applications can become SSL-enabled and switch to a secure model of communication.

SSL is the most popular standard for encrypted network communication and is used for almost all protocols, such as WWW, e-mail, FTP, and Jabber. It has multiple implementations, including open source ones such as OpenSSL, available fromhttp:// www.openssl.org/.

SSL offers end-to-end encryption of communication. It uses private and public key pairs for each of the peers communicating over the network. Public keys may be signed by a certificate authority (CA). Usually it is an application and / or machine in the network that deals with signing keys, and is trusted by other elements...