What is?
SSL or Secure Sockets Layer
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is the predecessor to Transport Layer Security (TLS), both are cryptographic protocols that provide secure communications on the Internet for such things as web browsing, e-mail, Internet faxing, instant messaging and other data transfers. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) enables encryption (a scrambling) of sensitve data information while online to keep the data information private and secure only to be translated or revealed to those you are communicating with via certain internet protocols. There are slight differences between Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), but they are substantially the same.
The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol allows applications to communicate across a network in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. Transport Layer Security (TLS) provides endpoint authentication and communications privacy over the Internet using cryptography. Typically, only the server is authenticated (i.e., its identity is ensured) while the client remains unauthenticated; this means that the end user (whether an individual or an application, such as a Web browser) can be sure with whom it is communicating. The next level of security—in which both ends of the "conversation" are sure with whom they are communicating—is known as mutual authentication. Mutual authentication requires Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) (is used to encrypt information) deployment to clients unless TLS-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) or TLS-SRP (Secure Remote Password)(used to decipher Public Keyed encrypted information) are used, which provide strong mutual authentication without needing to deploy a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol was originally developed by Netscape. Version 1.0 was never publicly released; version 2.0 was released in 1994 but "contained a number of security flaws which ultimately led to the design of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) version 3.0", which was released in 1996. This later served as the basis for Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.0, an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard protocol first defined in RFC 2246 in January 1999. Visa, MasterCard, American Express and many leading financial institutions have endorsed Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for commerce over the Internet.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) have been widely implemented in several open source software projects. Programmers may use the OpenSSL (an open source implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols), Network Security Services (NSS), or (GnuTLS) GNU Transport Layer Security (a free software implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols) all necessary libraries for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) functionality. Microsoft Windows includes an implementation of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) as part of its Secure Channel package.
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