“Welcome back, everyone, to yet another week of practical
invisibility for Linux users here at Sys Admin’s Corner.”
“Ages back (last week, in fact), we looked at what happens
inside your browser; this whole notion of certificates and
certificate authorities, or CAs. The more astute among you (I
know–that’s everyone!) pretty much figured out this meant an
article on implementing SSL and secure services for your web
site.”
“SSL is a secure network protocol originally created by Netscape
Communications, and is one of several Transport Layer Security
protocols (SSH, which we talked about a few weeks ago, is another).
The chief application/drive for SSL was and remains electronic
commerce. For users to willingly send their credit card
information over the Web, they needed to be convinced that no one
could intercept and decode their information (despite the fact that
those same people will drop their credit card on a restaurant table
while an anonymous server walks by, picks it up, and wanders off
with it–but that’s another story). For e-commerce to flourish, we
needed something like SSL, and Netscape answered that call. The
current version of the SSL protocol is v3. If you’re really
curious, you can visit the Netscape web site for the current SLL
3.0 specifications.”