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Setting up SSL connections on Apache 2
Safe Service
An attacker who captures the credentials for a blog can both spy on the user and break into the blog. By breaking into the blog, that attacker has actually broken into the web server. As an administrator, you should take all possible steps to secure sensitive areas of a website. Transport Layer Security (TLS) lets the web server and browser conduct their communication over an encrypted connection. TLS is a later version of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and this kind of connection is often still called an SSL connection. The box titled "Tap-Proof" shows how to set up an encrypted connection.
Tap-Proof
TLS and SSL are cryptographic network protocols. (Actually, they are collections of several protocols.) TLS encrypts the data provided by the browser and then sends the data to a web server via TCP (see Figure 1). SSL can thus encrypt not only HTTP traffic, but also the data of other application protocols such as FTP. In addition to data encryption, TLS also enables authentication and integrity control. A browser can therefore be sure that it is talking via an SSL connection to the correct server, that nobody can read the information that is sent, and that the data will reach the other end unchanged. The two parties can choose to limit the algorithms used. Data encryption is always handled by a symmetrical process, wherein a shared key is used for both encryption and decryption. The secret exchange of this key is guaranteed by a key exchange procedure (e.g., Diffie-Hellman [1]).
By setting the prefix to https:// in the URL, the user of a browser indicates the desire to use an encrypted connection. The process of opening the SSL connection is called the SSL handshake. The client first sends a request to the server (the client hello ). This
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