SSL and S/MIME
These are the web standards to enable server communications (SSL) and e-mail (S/MIME) on the internet
See http://home.netscape.com/info/security-doc.html ( multiple frames describing SSL S/MIME and certificates)
- http://home.netscape.com/assist/security/ssl/ (SSL Description)
- http://home.netscape.com/assist/security/ssl/howitworks.html (RSA cryptography in SSL)
- http://home.netscape.com/newsref/ref/internet-security.html (mainly SSL) and http://home.netscape.com/newsref/ref/ rsa.html (A tutorial)
- http://home.netscape.com/eng/ssl3/ssl-toc.html (SSL3.0 definition)
- http://www.consensus.com/security/ssl-talk-faq.html (SSL FAQ and URL’s)
Both these mechanisms use the standard strategy of public key cryptography to initiate transfer and secret key for message transfer
Message transfer is 40 bit RC4 (export) and 128 bit RC4 (internal)
Public key cryptography is 1024 bit