Trilight Zone

[digital8]

What is SSL?
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. The ?Secure? implies an encryption, while Socket Layer denotes an addition to the Window Socket system, Winsock. For those that don?t know, a Socket is an attachment to a port on a system. You can have many sockets on one port, providing they are non-blocking (allowing control to pass through to another socket aware application which wishes to connect to that port).

A Secure Socket Layer means that any sockets under it, are both secure and safe. The idea behind SSL was to provide an encrypted, and thus, secure route for traffic along a socket based system, such as TCP/IP (the internet protocol). Doing this allows security in credit card transactions on the Internet, encrypted and protected communiqué along a data line, and overall peace of mind.

The SSL uses an encryption standard developed by RSA. RSA are a world respected American organisation that specializes in encryption and data security. Initially, they developed a cipher length of only 40 bits, for use with the Secure Socket Layer, this was considered weak and therefore a longer much more complicated encryption cipher was created, 128 bits. The reasoning behind it was simple: it needs to be secure.

The RSA site puts the advantage of a longer encryption length pretty clearly: because 40-bit encryption is considered to be relatively weak. 128-bits is about 309 septillion times ( 309,485,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ) larger than 40-bits. This would mean it would take that many times longer to crack or break 128-bit encryption than it would 40-bit.

If you want more information on the technicalities or RSA?s SSL encryption engine, visit their site: http://www.rsasecurity.com/standards/ssl.

But what does all this encryption and security have to do with you?

Well, that?s a simple question. No matter how hard you try, at times your privacy will need to be knowingly invaded so you can make use of the product offered for doing so. If you think about food, for example, one cannot eat without swallowing. When we wish to make a transaction or view a site on the internet, where we have to give enough information away so that it happens, we also want to be assured no one else along the line gathers that data. An encrypted session would mean our data is not at the hands of any privacy perpetrators unless they knew how to decode it ? and the only ones in the know, are those you specifically wish. SSL uses public key encryption as explained in the PGP section.

To put this at a head: if you use an encrypted connection or session, you can be relatively assured that there are no prying eyes along the way.