To understand OpenSSL, you also need to understand its two broad purposes. First, it serves as a toolkit for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols. Second, it is a general purpose cryptography library for applications securing communications taking place over computer networks. This is essential in revealing identities of parties communicating between two points on the internet and guarding systems against eavesdropping. OpenSSL is initially written in C but has wrappers (programs or data that frames other programs or data so that they can run smoothly) supporting numerous other languages. It has wide use in web servers with over 60% web servers having them in 2017.

The OpenSSL library holds tools essential for the following tasks:

• Generating private keys for RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, a public key cryptosystem)
• Generating Certificate Signing Request (CSRs)
• Performing encryption/decryption as well as managing certificates

Therefore, OpenSSL can broadly be described as a platform that provides an array of utility functions as well as implementing basic cryptographic functions. This makes it an important element of internet security and cryptography.

A brief history of OpenSSL

There was the need for tools that could be used for encrypting code being used on the rapidly expanding internet in 1998. Around the same time, Tim Hudson and Eric Andrew Young were working on the SSLeay project which abruptly ended in December that year when the duo joined RSA security. What is SSLeay? It is an open-sourced SSL implementation. As a result, the now-defunct SSLeay provided the foundation for the OpenSSL project which was launched by Stephen Henson and a team of other 11 developers.

The project has since grown tremendously and has a budget of $ 1 Million which is shouldered by donors.

The platform holds its license under the Apache-style license allocation. This means that there are simple license conditions that give anyone freedom to freely obtain OpenSSL and use it for both non-commercial and commercial purposes.

Over the years a number of OpenSSL and TLS vulnerabilties have been discovered by security researchers, which signifies the importance of having penetration test performed against an organizations external and internal attack surface.

Hudson also developed patches intended to support SSL via open-source applications using SSLeay. The SSLeay library, along with its codebase, is licensed under its own SSLeay License, which is a form of free software license. SSLeay was licensed under a BSD-style open-source license, which comes from a family of permissive free software licenses. These public domain licenses impose minimal restrictions on the use and redistribution of the covered content. The acronym stems from its namesake, which is Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The purpose of the BSD license stands in contrast to copyleft licenses, which possess reciprocity share-alike requirements. BSD open-source licenses have been revised from their original formulation and the resulting deviations are now referred to as modified BSD licenses.

In 1998, the development of SSLeay by Young and Hudson ceased when both innovators started working for RSA Security in Australia. However, the application was continued in the form of OpenSSL, which is a fork (when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and utilize it in the independent development of another distinct and separate piece of software) and successor project to SSLeay and has a similar interface to it.

Why penetration testing is an important part of IT security

In the IT world, you would be able to see penetration testing to have become one of the most important concepts. This is because this could be used to assess and identify possible vulnerabilities in order to ensure the security of information, along with confidential data pertaining to technology.

Hence, for those people who do not seem to know much about what penetration testing is, a testing procedure that is typically used to identify possible vulnerabilities or risks that a particular network would face. It would successfully be able to point out the areas from which the illegal or unauthorized access could be obtained that could then destroy the reputation or credibility of a business environment.

In other words, penetration testing could mainly be used to identify and examine all the possible points of vulnerabilities that a company could face within its computer networks.

The importance of penetration testing in the IT world

In the modern day and age, ethical hacking seems to have become quite famous, not only to determine the breach of security but also to propose the best solutions for an organization’s computer network systems. As a result, ethical hackers would be able to identify or determine the possible drawbacks or vulnerabilities that would seem to exist in computer networks.

As a result, an ethical hacker would be responsible for collecting all the necessary information of the hacking results. This would be done to ensure that the security of computer networks would be improved.

During the penetration testing process, an individual would be given the authority to deliberately breach the security system. This would be done to determine the vulnerability and then propose the best solutions for computer network protection.

In the penetration testing process, risk assessment would seem like the main objective. After all, this would be used to determine the weaknesses of the security system in several ways. It would examine the security of networked systems and external hosts, including firewall protection software and the computer network systems of servers. It would also be used to evaluate the application security risks that would be coming from proprietary applications. In addition, penetration testing could also be used to examine the internal security risks that would tend to exist in a computer network.

Other than all these, penetration testing could also be used to identify the wireless security vulnerabilities or risks. This test would be conducted in order to examine when the access of the current network would be possible. This would be done through both current and highly developed technologies like mailbox access and VOIP.

As a result, penetration testing seems to have become a highly viable asset for growing companies. This is because it would be successful in providing them with all the necessary information about how the data hacking could be secured. In addition, it would also be highly useful and effective for businesses because it would provide vulnerability reports to business owners which would indicate the most likely issues of data breach locations.

All in all, it could be seen that penetration testing indeed has a significant role to play in the IT world.