What is OpenSSL? SSL Explained

What is OpenSSL? 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…

What is SSLEAY?

Those who are unfamiliar with and/or are educating themselves in regards to Technology may be pondering the question, “What is SSLeay?” By definition, it is a form of open-source secure sockets layer (SSL) implementation. The technology was initially developed in 1995 by Tim J. Hudson and Eric Andrew Young as an SSL 3.0 implementation using RC2 and RC4 encryption. The concept was developed by Young and Windows support was provided by Hudson. Generally, SSLeay is pronounced by clearly stating each letter. The impetus of the idea is also based upon the implementation of the data encryption standard (DES), which originated from earlier work by Young and was believed to be the first open-source implementation of DES. 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…

Why Penetration Testing is an Important Part of IT Security

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…