Secure Sockets Layer

• Published in: Computer (Long Beach, Calif.) Vol. 39; no. 4; pp. 88 - 90
• Main Author: Weaver, A.C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01-04-2006; IEEE Computer Society; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Assembly; Authentication; Compressed; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Cryptography; Cybersecurity; Data encryption; Decoding; Digital signatures; Exact sciences and technology; Exchange; Information, signal and communications theory; Internet; Mathematics; Messages; Network security; Public key; Public key cryptography; Publishing; Random numbers; Secure Sockets Layer; Secure Sockets Layer protocol; Signal and communications theory; Sockets; Software; Telecommunications and information theory; Web pages; Wheels; Digital signature; Public key cryptography; Cryptography; Computer security
• ISSN: 0018-9162; 1558-0814
• DOI: 10.1109/MC.2006.138

Secure Sockets Layer is a Web-based protocol used for securing data exchanges over the Internet. To understand how SSL does its job, we also must review the two cryptographic techniques on which it relies: symmetric-key and public-key cryptography (PKC). If a particular recipient is intended to decode the ciphertext, the sender and receiver must be using the same cryptographic technique, and they must safeguard a secret - a random number (called a key) in the case of symmetric-key cryptography, or the private key of a public/private key pair in the case of the public-key cryptography. To transport data, large messages are divided into multiple smaller messages with a maximum size of 16 Kbytes. Each message is optionally compressed, then a message authentication code (a hash derived from the plaintext, the two nonces, and the pre master secret) is appended. The plain-text and appended MAC are now encrypted using the negotiated symmetric-key scheme and the computed session key.