The SSL/Tls Ultimate Guide e-Book

Introduction to SSL

SSL, acronym of Secure Sockets Layer, works almost like a passport, where it serves two purposes. Firstly, it permits to access encrypted information through Public Key Infrastructure and secondly, it helps authenticate the identity of the owner of the SSL certificate.

SSL, also known as TLS (Transport Layer Security), is widely used in websites no matter what kind of website it is, whether it’s a simple blog or a shopping portal. Moreover, if you have ever noticed the URLs of websites, they either show HTTPS or HTTP. The difference between the two is the ‘S’ at the end. HTTPS indicates that the website is secured by an SSL certificate that helps in securing the communication that happens between your web-browser and the website you’re visiting.

In other words, SSL one of the security technologies that offer a secure connection between the web server and web browser. It assures that the data transferred between the web server and browser is secured and original.

1995 – Netscape went further down the road to make more improvements to strengthen the cryptographic algorithms to solve the problems of SSLv2. As SSLv2 used weak MAC construction, the upgraded version called SSLv3 was released. This fixed the problem related to SSLv2 and also offered enhanced features like support for several security algorithms that were not supported previously.

1999 – In the form of upgrading SSL3.0, TLS 1.0 (Transport Layer Security) written by Christopher Allen & Tim Dierks, was defined in RFC 2246. As per the RFC, “the differences between this protocol and SSL 3.0 are not dramatic, but they are significant enough to preclude interoperability between TLS 1.0 and SSL 3.0.”

2006 – TLS 1.1 was introduced in RFC 4346

2008 – TLS 1.2 was introduced in RFC 5246

2018 – Unsafe technologies in the previous versions were removed and TLS 1.3, the current version was released. TLS 1.3 offers better privacy than its predecessors.