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-
- <manualpage metafile="ssl_intro.xml.meta">
- <parentdocument href="./">SSL/TLS</parentdocument>
-
- <title>SSL/TLS Strong Encryption: An Introduction</title>
-
- <summary>
- <blockquote>
- <p>The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose
- from. And if you really don't like all the standards you just have to
- wait another year until the one arises you are looking for.</p>
-
- <p class="cite">-- <cite>A. Tanenbaum</cite>, "Introduction to
- Computer Networks"</p>
- </blockquote>
-
- <p>As an introduction this chapter is aimed at readers who are familiar
- with the Web, HTTP, and Apache, but are not security experts. It is not
- intended to be a definitive guide to the SSL protocol, nor does it discuss
- specific techniques for managing certificates in an organization, or the
- important legal issues of patents and import and export restrictions.
- Rather, it is intended to provide a common background to mod_ssl users by
- pulling together various concepts, definitions, and examples as a starting
- point for further exploration.</p>
-
- <p>The presented content is mainly derived, with permission by the author,
- from the article <a
- href="http://home.earthlink.net/~fjhirsch/Papers/wwwj/article.html">Introducing
- SSL and Certificates using SSLeay</a> from <a
- href="http://home.earthlink.net/~fjhirsch/">Frederick J. Hirsch</a>, of The
- Open Group Research Institute, which was published in <a
- href="http://www.ora.com/catalog/wjsum97/">Web Security: A Matter of
- Trust</a>, World Wide Web Journal, Volume 2, Issue 3, Summer 1997.
- Please send any positive feedback to <a
- href="mailto:hirsch@fjhirsch.com">Frederick Hirsch</a> (the original
- article author) and all negative feedback to <a
- href="mailto:rse@engelschall.com">Ralf S. Engelschall</a> (the
- <module>mod_ssl</module> author).</p>
- </summary>
-
- <section id="cryptographictech">
- <title>Cryptographic Techniques</title>
- <p>Understanding SSL requires an understanding of cryptographic
- algorithms, message digest functions (aka. one-way or hash functions), and
- digital signatures. These techniques are the subject of entire books (see
- for instance [<a href="#AC96">AC96</a>]) and provide the basis for privacy,
- integrity, and authentication.</p>
-
- <section id="cryptographicalgo">
- <title>Cryptographic Algorithms</title>
- <p>Suppose Alice wants to send a message to her bank to transfer some
- money. Alice would like the message to be private, since it will
- include information such as her account number and transfer amount. One
- solution is to use a cryptographic algorithm, a technique that would
- transform her message into an encrypted form, unreadable except by
- those it is intended for. Once in this form, the message may only be
- interpreted through the use of a secret key. Without the key the
- message is useless: good cryptographic algorithms make it so difficult
- for intruders to decode the original text that it isn't worth their
- effort.</p>
-
- <p>There are two categories of cryptographic algorithms: conventional
- and public key.</p>
-
- <dl>
- <dt>Conventional cryptography</dt>
- <dd>also known as symmetric cryptography, requires the sender and
- receiver to share a key: a secret piece of information that may be
- used to encrypt or decrypt a message. If this key is secret, then
- nobody other than the sender or receiver may read the message. If
- Alice and the bank know a secret key, then they may send each other
- private messages. The task of privately choosing a key before
- communicating, however, can be problematic.</dd>
-
- <dt>Public key cryptography</dt>
- <dd>also known as asymmetric cryptography, solves the key exchange
- problem by defining an algorithm which uses two keys, each of which
- may be used to encrypt a message. If one key is used to encrypt a
- message then the other must be used to decrypt it. This makes it
- possible to receive secure messages by simply publishing one key
- (the public key) and keeping the other secret (the private key).</dd>
- </dl>
-
- <p>Anyone may encrypt a message using the public key, but only the
- owner of the private key will be able to read it. In this way, Alice
- may send private messages to the owner of a key-pair (the bank), by
- encrypting it using their public key. Only the bank will be able to
- decrypt it.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="messagedigests">
- <title>Message Digests</title>
- <p>Although Alice may encrypt her message to make it private, there
- is still a concern that someone might modify her original message or
- substitute it with a different one, in order to transfer the money
- to themselves, for instance. One way of guaranteeing the integrity
- of Alice's message is to create a concise summary of her message and
- send this to the bank as well. Upon receipt of the message, the bank
- creates its own summary and compares it with the one Alice sent. If
- they agree then the message was received intact.</p>
-
- <p>A summary such as this is called a <dfn>message digest</dfn>, <em>one-way
- function</em> or <em>hash function</em>. Message digests are used to create
- short, fixed-length representations of longer, variable-length messages.
- Digest algorithms are designed to produce unique digests for different
- messages. Message digests are designed to make it too difficult to determine
- the message from the digest, and also impossible to find two different
- messages which create the same digest -- thus eliminating the possibility of
- substituting one message for another while maintaining the same digest.</p>
- <p>Another challenge that Alice faces is finding a way to send the digest to the
- bank securely; when this is achieved, the integrity of the associated message
- is assured. One way to do this is to include the digest in a digital
- signature.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="digitalsignatures"><title>Digital Signatures</title>
- <p>When Alice sends a message to the bank, the bank needs to ensure that the
- message is really from her, so an intruder does not request a transaction
- involving her account. A <em>digital signature</em>, created by Alice and
- included with the message, serves this purpose.</p>
-
- <p>Digital signatures are created by encrypting a digest of the message,
- and other information (such as a sequence number) with the sender's
- private key. Though anyone may <em>decrypt</em> the signature using the public
- key, only the signer knows the private key. This means that only they may
- have signed it. Including the digest in the signature means the signature is
- only good for that message; it also ensures the integrity of the message since
- no one can change the digest and still sign it.</p>
- <p>To guard against interception and reuse of the signature by an intruder at a
- later date, the signature contains a unique sequence number. This protects
- the bank from a fraudulent claim from Alice that she did not send the message
- -- only she could have signed it (non-repudiation).</p>
- </section>
- </section>
- <!-- /cryptographictech -->
-
- <section id="certificates">
- <title>Certificates</title>
- <p>Although Alice could have sent a private message to the bank, signed
- it, and ensured the integrity of the message, she still needs to be sure
- that she is really communicating with the bank. This means that she needs
- to be sure that the public key she is using corresponds to the bank's
- private key. Similarly, the bank also needs to verify that the message
- signature really corresponds to Alice's signature.</p>
-
- <p>If each party has a certificate which validates the other's identity,
- confirms the public key, and is signed by a trusted agency, then they both
- will be assured that they are communicating with whom they think they are.
- Such a trusted agency is called a <em>Certificate Authority</em>, and
- certificates are used for authentication.</p>
-
- <section id="certificatecontents">
- <title>Certificate Contents</title>
- <p>A certificate associates a public key with the real identity of
- an individual, server, or other entity, known as the subject. As
- shown in <a href="#table1">Table 1</a>, information about the subject
- includes identifying information (the distinguished name), and the
- public key. It also includes the identification and signature of the
- Certificate Authority that issued the certificate, and the period of
- time during which the certificate is valid. It may have additional
- information (or extensions) as well as administrative information
- for the Certificate Authority's use, such as a serial number.</p>
-
- <section id="table1">
- <title>Table 1: Certificate Information</title>
- <table>
- <columnspec><column width=".35"/><column width=".35"/>
- </columnspec>
- <tr><th>Subject</th>
- <td>Distinguished Name, Public Key</td></tr>
- <tr><th>Issuer</th>
- <td>Distinguished Name, Signature</td></tr>
- <tr><th>Period of Validity</th>
- <td>Not Before Date, Not After Date</td></tr>
- <tr><th>Administrative Information</th>
- <td>Version, Serial Number</td></tr>
- <tr><th>Extended Information</th>
- <td>Basic Constraints, Netscape Flags, etc.</td></tr>
- </table>
- </section>
-
- <p>A distinguished name is used to provide an identity in a specific
- context -- for instance, an individual might have a personal
- certificate as well as one for their identity as an employee.
- Distinguished names are defined by the X.509 standard [<a
- href="#X509">X509</a>], which defines the fields, field names, and
- abbreviations used to refer to the fields (see <a href="#table2">Table
- 2</a>).</p>
-
- <section id="table2">
- <title>Table 2: Distinguished Name Information</title>
- <table border="1">
- <columnspec><column width=".25"/><column width=".15"/>
- <column width=".3"/><column width=".25"/></columnspec>
- <tr><th>DN Field</th>
- <th>Abbrev.</th>
- <th>Description</th>
- <th>Example</th></tr>
- <tr><td>Common Name</td>
- <td>CN</td>
- <td>Name being certified</td>
- <td>CN=Joe Average</td></tr>
- <tr><td>Organization or Company</td>
- <td>O</td>
- <td>Name is associated with this<br />organization</td>
- <td>O=Snake Oil, Ltd.</td></tr>
- <tr><td>Organizational Unit</td>
- <td>OU</td>
- <td>Name is associated with this <br />organization unit, such
- as a department</td>
- <td>OU=Research Institute</td></tr>
- <tr><td>City/Locality</td>
- <td>L</td>
- <td>Name is located in this City</td>
- <td>L=Snake City</td></tr>
- <tr><td>State/Province</td>
- <td>ST</td>
- <td>Name is located in this State/Province</td>
- <td>ST=Desert</td></tr>
- <tr><td>Country</td>
- <td>C</td>
- <td>Name is located in this Country (ISO code)</td>
- <td>C=XZ</td></tr>
- </table>
- </section>
-
- <p>A Certificate Authority may define a policy specifying which
- distinguished field names are optional, and which are required. It
- may also place requirements upon the field contents, as may users of
- certificates. As an example, a Netscape browser requires that the
- Common Name for a certificate representing a server has a name which
- matches a wildcard pattern for the domain name of that server, such
- as <code>*.snakeoil.com</code>.</p>
-
- <p>The binary format of a certificate is defined using the ASN.1
- notation [<a href="#X208">X208</a>] [<a href="#PKCS">PKCS</a>]. This
- notation defines how to specify the contents, and encoding rules
- define how this information is translated into binary form. The binary
- encoding of the certificate is defined using Distinguished Encoding
- Rules (DER), which are based on the more general Basic Encoding Rules
- (BER). For those transmissions which cannot handle binary, the binary
- form may be translated into an ASCII form by using Base64 encoding
- [<a href="#MIME">MIME</a>]. This encoded version is called PEM encoded
- (the name comes from "Privacy Enhanced Mail"), when placed between
- begin and end delimiter lines as illustrated in the following
- example.</p>
-
- <example>
- <title>Example of a PEM-encoded certificate (snakeoil.crt)</title>
- <pre>-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
- MIIC7jCCAlegAwIBAgIBATANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQQFADCBqTELMAkGA1UEBhMCWFkx
- FTATBgNVBAgTDFNuYWtlIERlc2VydDETMBEGA1UEBxMKU25ha2UgVG93bjEXMBUG
- A1UEChMOU25ha2UgT2lsLCBMdGQxHjAcBgNVBAsTFUNlcnRpZmljYXRlIEF1dGhv
- cml0eTEVMBMGA1UEAxMMU25ha2UgT2lsIENBMR4wHAYJKoZIhvcNAQkBFg9jYUBz
- bmFrZW9pbC5kb20wHhcNOTgxMDIxMDg1ODM2WhcNOTkxMDIxMDg1ODM2WjCBpzEL
- MAkGA1UEBhMCWFkxFTATBgNVBAgTDFNuYWtlIERlc2VydDETMBEGA1UEBxMKU25h
- a2UgVG93bjEXMBUGA1UEChMOU25ha2UgT2lsLCBMdGQxFzAVBgNVBAsTDldlYnNl
- cnZlciBUZWFtMRkwFwYDVQQDExB3d3cuc25ha2VvaWwuZG9tMR8wHQYJKoZIhvcN
- AQkBFhB3d3dAc25ha2VvaWwuZG9tMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKB
- gQDH9Ge/s2zcH+da+rPTx/DPRp3xGjHZ4GG6pCmvADIEtBtKBFAcZ64n+Dy7Np8b
- vKR+yy5DGQiijsH1D/j8HlGE+q4TZ8OFk7BNBFazHxFbYI4OKMiCxdKzdif1yfaa
- lWoANFlAzlSdbxeGVHoT0K+gT5w3UxwZKv2DLbCTzLZyPwIDAQABoyYwJDAPBgNV
- HRMECDAGAQH/AgEAMBEGCWCGSAGG+EIBAQQEAwIAQDANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQQFAAOB
- gQAZUIHAL4D09oE6Lv2k56Gp38OBDuILvwLg1v1KL8mQR+KFjghCrtpqaztZqcDt
- 2q2QoyulCgSzHbEGmi0EsdkPfg6mp0penssIFePYNI+/8u9HT4LuKMJX15hxBam7
- dUHzICxBVC1lnHyYGjDuAMhe396lYAn8bCld1/L4NMGBCQ==
- -----END CERTIFICATE-----</pre>
- </example>
- </section>
-
- <section id="certificateauthorities">
- <title>Certificate Authorities</title>
- <p>By first verifying the information in a certificate request
- before granting the certificate, the Certificate Authority assures
- the identity of the private key owner of a key-pair. For instance,
- if Alice requests a personal certificate, the Certificate Authority
- must first make sure that Alice really is the person the certificate
- request claims.</p>
-
- <section id="certificatechains">
- <title>Certificate Chains</title>
- <p>A Certificate Authority may also issue a certificate for
- another Certificate Authority. When examining a certificate,
- Alice may need to examine the certificate of the issuer, for each
- parent Certificate Authority, until reaching one which she has
- confidence in. She may decide to trust only certificates with a
- limited chain of issuers, to reduce her risk of a "bad" certificate
- in the chain.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="rootlevelca">
- <title>Creating a Root-Level CA</title>
- <p>As noted earlier, each certificate requires an issuer to assert
- the validity of the identity of the certificate subject, up to
- the top-level Certificate Authority (CA). This presents a problem:
- Since this is who vouches for the certificate of the top-level
- authority, which has no issuer? In this unique case, the
- certificate is "self-signed", so the issuer of the certificate is
- the same as the subject. As a result, one must exercise extra care
- in trusting a self-signed certificate. The wide publication of a
- public key by the root authority reduces the risk in trusting this
- key -- it would be obvious if someone else publicized a key
- claiming to be the authority. Browsers are preconfigured to trust
- well-known certificate authorities.</p>
-
- <p>A number of companies, such as <a href="http://www.thawte.com/"
- >Thawte</a> and <a href="http://www.verisign.com/">VeriSign</a>
- have established themselves as Certificate Authorities. These
- companies provide the following services:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>Verifying certificate requests</li>
- <li>Processing certificate requests</li>
- <li>Issuing and managing certificates</li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>It is also possible to create your own Certificate Authority.
- Although risky in the Internet environment, it may be useful
- within an Intranet where the organization can easily verify the
- identities of individuals and servers.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="certificatemanagement">
- <title>Certificate Management</title>
- <p>Establishing a Certificate Authority is a responsibility which
- requires a solid administrative, technical, and management
- framework. Certificate Authorities not only issue certificates,
- they also manage them -- that is, they determine how long
- certificates are valid, they renew them, and they keep lists of
- certificates that have already been issued but are no longer valid
- (Certificate Revocation Lists, or CRLs). Say Alice is entitled to
- a certificate as an employee of a company. Say too, that the
- certificate needs to be revoked when Alice leaves the company. Since
- certificates are objects that get passed around, it is impossible
- to tell from the certificate alone that it has been revoked. When
- examining certificates for validity, therefore, it is necessary to
- contact the issuing Certificate Authority to check CRLs -- this
- is not usually an automated part of the process.</p>
-
- <note><title>Note</title>
- <p>If you use a Certificate Authority that is not configured into
- browsers by default, it is necessary to load the Certificate
- Authority certificate into the browser, enabling the browser to
- validate server certificates signed by that Certificate Authority.
- Doing so may be dangerous, since once loaded, the browser will
- accept all certificates signed by that Certificate Authority.</p>
- </note>
- </section>
- </section>
- <!-- /certificateauthorities -->
- </section>
- <!-- /certificates -->
-
- <section id="ssl">
- <title>Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)</title>
- <p>The Secure Sockets Layer protocol is a protocol layer which may be
- placed between a reliable connection-oriented network layer protocol
- (e.g. TCP/IP) and the application protocol layer (e.g. HTTP). SSL provides
- for secure communication between client and server by allowing mutual
- authentication, the use of digital signatures for integrity, and encryption
- for privacy.</p>
-
- <p>The protocol is designed to support a range of choices for specific
- algorithms used for cryptography, digests, and signatures. This allows
- algorithm selection for specific servers to be made based on legal, export
- or other concerns, and also enables the protocol to take advantage of new
- algorithms. Choices are negotiated between client and server at the start
- of establishing a protocol session.</p>
-
- <section id="table4">
- <title>Table 4: Versions of the SSL protocol</title>
- <table border="1">
- <columnspec><column width=".15"/><column width=".2"/>
- <column width=".30"/><column width=".25"/></columnspec>
- <tr><th>Version</th>
- <th>Source</th>
- <th>Description</th>
- <th>Browser Support</th></tr>
- <tr><td>SSL v2.0</td>
- <td>Vendor Standard (from Netscape Corp.) [<a href="#SSL2"
- >SSL2</a>]</td>
- <td>First SSL protocol for which implementations exists</td>
- <td>- NS Navigator 1.x/2.x<br />
- - MS IE 3.x<br />
- - Lynx/2.8+OpenSSL</td></tr>
- <tr><td>SSL v3.0</td>
- <td>Expired Internet Draft (from Netscape Corp.) [<a href="#SSL3"
- >SSL3</a>]</td>
- <td>Revisions to prevent specific security attacks, add non-RSA
- ciphers, and support for certificate chains</td>
- <td>- NS Navigator 2.x/3.x/4.x<br />
- - MS IE 3.x/4.x<br />
- - Lynx/2.8+OpenSSL</td></tr>
- <tr><td>TLS v1.0</td>
- <td>Proposed Internet Standard (from IETF) [<a href="#TLS1"
- >TLS1</a>]</td>
- <td>Revision of SSL 3.0 to update the MAC layer to HMAC, add block
- padding for block ciphers, message order standardization and more
- alert messages.</td>
- <td>- Lynx/2.8+OpenSSL</td></tr>
- </table>
- </section>
-
- <p>There are a number of versions of the SSL protocol, as shown in
- <a href="#table4">Table 4</a>. As noted there, one of the benefits in
- SSL 3.0 is that it adds support of certificate chain loading. This feature
- allows a server to pass a server certificate along with issuer certificates
- to the browser. Chain loading also permits the browser to validate the
- server certificate, even if Certificate Authority certificates are not
- installed for the intermediate issuers, since they are included in the
- certificate chain. SSL 3.0 is the basis for the Transport Layer Security
- [<a href="#TLS1">TLS</a>] protocol standard, currently in development by
- the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).</p>
-
- <section id="session">
- <title>Session Establishment</title>
- <p>The SSL session is established by following a handshake sequence
- between client and server, as shown in <a href="#figure1"
- >Figure 1</a>. This sequence may vary, depending on whether the server
- is configured to provide a server certificate or request a client
- certificate. Though cases exist where additional handshake steps
- are required for management of cipher information, this article
- summarizes one common scenario: see the SSL specification for the full
- range of possibilities.</p>
-
- <note><title>Note</title>
- <p>Once an SSL session has been established it may be reused, thus
- avoiding the performance penalty of repeating the many steps needed
- to start a session. For this the server assigns each SSL session a
- unique session identifier which is cached in the server and which the
- client can use on forthcoming connections to reduce the handshake
- (until the session identifer expires in the cache of the server).</p>
- </note>
-
- <p class="figure">
- <img src="ssl_intro_fig1.gif" alt="" width="423" height="327" /><br />
- <a id="figure1" name="figure1"><dfn>Figure 1</dfn></a>: Simplified SSL
- Handshake Sequence</p>
-
- <p>The elements of the handshake sequence, as used by the client and
- server, are listed below:</p>
-
- <ol>
- <li>Negotiate the Cipher Suite to be used during data transfer</li>
- <li>Establish and share a session key between client and server</li>
- <li>Optionally authenticate the server to the client</li>
- <li>Optionally authenticate the client to the server</li>
- </ol>
-
- <p>The first step, Cipher Suite Negotiation, allows the client and
- server to choose a Cipher Suite supportable by both of them. The SSL3.0
- protocol specification defines 31 Cipher Suites. A Cipher Suite is
- defined by the following components:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>Key Exchange Method</li>
- <li>Cipher for Data Transfer</li>
- <li>Message Digest for creating the Message Authentication Code (MAC)</li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>These three elements are described in the sections that follow.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="keyexchange">
- <title>Key Exchange Method</title>
- <p>The key exchange method defines how the shared secret symmetric
- cryptography key used for application data transfer will be agreed
- upon by client and server. SSL 2.0 uses RSA key exchange only, while
- SSL 3.0 supports a choice of key exchange algorithms including the
- RSA key exchange when certificates are used, and Diffie-Hellman key
- exchange for exchanging keys without certificates and without prior
- communication between client and server.</p>
-
- <p>One variable in the choice of key exchange methods is digital
- signatures -- whether or not to use them, and if so, what kind of
- signatures to use. Signing with a private key provides assurance
- against a man-in-the-middle-attack during the information exchange
- used in generating the shared key [<a href="#AC96">AC96</a>, p516].</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="ciphertransfer">
- <title>Cipher for Data Transfer</title>
- <p>SSL uses the conventional cryptography algorithm (symmetric
- cryptography) described earlier for encrypting messages in a session.
- There are nine choices, including the choice to perform no
- encryption:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>No encryption</li>
- <li>Stream Ciphers
- <ul>
- <li>RC4 with 40-bit keys</li>
- <li>RC4 with 128-bit keys</li>
- </ul></li>
- <li>CBC Block Ciphers
- <ul><li>RC2 with 40 bit key</li>
- <li>DES with 40 bit key</li>
- <li>DES with 56 bit key</li>
- <li>Triple-DES with 168 bit key</li>
- <li>Idea (128 bit key)</li>
- <li>Fortezza (96 bit key)</li>
- </ul></li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>Here "CBC" refers to Cipher Block Chaining, which means that a
- portion of the previously encrypted cipher text is used in the
- encryption of the current block. "DES" refers to the Data Encryption
- Standard [<a href="#AC96">AC96</a>, ch12], which has a number of
- variants (including DES40 and 3DES_EDE). "Idea" is one of the best
- and cryptographically strongest available algorithms, and "RC2" is
- a proprietary algorithm from RSA DSI [<a href="#AC96">AC96</a>,
- ch13].</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="digestfuntion">
- <title>Digest Function</title>
- <p>The choice of digest function determines how a digest is created
- from a record unit. SSL supports the following:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>No digest (Null choice)</li>
- <li>MD5, a 128-bit hash</li>
- <li>Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1), a 160-bit hash</li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>The message digest is used to create a Message Authentication Code
- (MAC) which is encrypted with the message to provide integrity and to
- prevent against replay attacks.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="handshake">
- <title>Handshake Sequence Protocol</title>
- <p>The handshake sequence uses three protocols:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>The <dfn>SSL Handshake Protocol</dfn>
- for performing the client and server SSL session establishment.</li>
- <li>The <dfn>SSL Change Cipher Spec Protocol</dfn> for actually
- establishing agreement on the Cipher Suite for the session.</li>
- <li>The <dfn>SSL Alert Protocol</dfn> for conveying SSL error
- messages between client and server.</li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>These protocols, as well as application protocol data, are
- encapsulated in the <dfn>SSL Record Protocol</dfn>, as shown in
- <a href="#figure2">Figure 2</a>. An encapsulated protocol is
- transferred as data by the lower layer protocol, which does not
- examine the data. The encapsulated protocol has no knowledge of the
- underlying protocol.</p>
-
- <p class="figure">
- <img src="ssl_intro_fig2.gif" alt="" width="428" height="217" /><br />
- <a id="figure2" name="figure2"><dfn>Figure 2</dfn></a>: SSL Protocol Stack
- </p>
-
- <p>The encapsulation of SSL control protocols by the record protocol
- means that if an active session is renegotiated the control protocols
- will be transmitted securely. If there were no session before, then
- the Null cipher suite is used, which means there is no encryption and
- messages have no integrity digests until the session has been
- established.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="datatransfer">
- <title>Data Transfer</title>
- <p>The SSL Record Protocol, shown in <a href="#figure3">Figure 3</a>,
- is used to transfer application and SSL Control data between the
- client and server, possibly fragmenting this data into smaller units,
- or combining multiple higher level protocol data messages into single
- units. It may compress, attach digest signatures, and encrypt these
- units before transmitting them using the underlying reliable transport
- protocol (Note: currently all major SSL implementations lack support
- for compression).</p>
-
- <p class="figure">
- <img src="ssl_intro_fig3.gif" alt="" width="423" height="323" /><br />
- <a id="figure3" name="figure3"><dfn>Figure 3</dfn></a>: SSL Record Protocol
- </p>
- </section>
-
- <section id="securehttp">
- <title>Securing HTTP Communication</title>
- <p>One common use of SSL is to secure Web HTTP communication between
- a browser and a webserver. This case does not preclude the use of
- non-secured HTTP. The secure version is mainly plain HTTP over SSL
- (named HTTPS), but with one major difference: it uses the URL scheme
- <code>https</code> rather than <code>http</code> and a different
- server port (by default 443). This mainly is what <module
- >mod_ssl</module> provides to you for the Apache webserver...</p>
- </section>
- </section>
- <!-- /ssl -->
-
- <section id="references">
- <title>References</title>
- <dl>
- <dt><a id="AC96" name="AC96">[AC96]</a></dt>
- <dd>Bruce Schneier, <q>Applied Cryptography</q>, 2nd Edition, Wiley,
- 1996. See <a href="http://www.counterpane.com/"
- >http://www.counterpane.com/</a> for various other materials by Bruce
- Schneier.</dd>
-
- <dt><a id="X208" name="X208">[X208]</a></dt>
- <dd>ITU-T Recommendation X.208, <q>Specification of Abstract Syntax Notation
- One (ASN.1)</q>, 1988. See for instance <a
- href="http://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?type=items&lang=e&parent=T-REC-X.208-198811-I"
- >http://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?type=items&lang=e&parent=T-REC-X.208-198811-I</a>.
- </dd>
-
- <dt><a id="X509" name="X509">[X509]</a></dt>
- <dd>ITU-T Recommendation X.509, <q>The Directory - Authentication
- Framework</q>. See for instance <a
- href="http://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?type=folders&lang=e&parent=T-REC-X.509"
- >http://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?type=folders&lang=e&parent=T-REC-X.509</a>.
- </dd>
-
- <dt><a id="PKCS" name="PKCS">[PKCS]</a></dt>
- <dd><q>Public Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS)</q>,
- RSA Laboratories Technical Notes, See <a
- href="http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/pkcs/"
- >http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/pkcs/</a>.</dd>
-
- <dt><a id="MIME" name="MIME">[MIME]</a></dt>
- <dd>N. Freed, N. Borenstein, <q>Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
- (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies</q>, RFC2045.
- See for instance <a href="http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt"
- >http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt</a>.</dd>
-
- <dt><a id="SSL2" name="SSL2">[SSL2]</a></dt>
- <dd>Kipp E.B. Hickman, <q>The SSL Protocol</q>, 1995. See <a
- href="http://www.netscape.com/eng/security/SSL_2.html"
- >http://www.netscape.com/eng/security/SSL_2.html</a>.</dd>
-
- <dt><a id="SSL3" name="SSL3">[SSL3]</a></dt>
- <dd>Alan O. Freier, Philip Karlton, Paul C. Kocher, <q>The SSL Protocol
- Version 3.0</q>, 1996. See <a
- href="http://www.netscape.com/eng/ssl3/draft302.txt"
- >http://www.netscape.com/eng/ssl3/draft302.txt</a>.</dd>
-
- <dt><a id="TLS1" name="TLS1">[TLS1]</a></dt>
- <dd>Tim Dierks, Christopher Allen, <q>The TLS Protocol Version 1.0</q>,
- 1999. See <a href="http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc2246.txt"
- >http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc2246.txt</a>.</dd>
- </dl>
- </section>
- <!-- /references -->
-
- </manualpage>
-