The classes below provide support for secure network communication using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, using the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/) to perform encryption and protocol handling.

See the OpenSSL Compatibility page for information about the versions of OpenSSL that are known to work with Qt.

Enabling and Disabling SSL Support

When building Qt from source, the configuration system checks for the presence of the openssl/opensslv.h header provided by source or developer packages of OpenSSL.

By default, an SSL-enabled Qt library dynamically loads any installed OpenSSL library at run-time. However, it is possible to link against the library at compile-time by configuring Qt with the -openssl-linked option.

When building a version of Qt linked against OpenSSL, the build system will attempt to link with libssl and libcrypt libraries located in the default location on the developer's system. This location is configurable: set the OPENSSL_LIBS environment variable to contain the linker options required to link Qt against the installed library. For example, on a Unix/Linux system:

OPENSSL_LIBS='-L/opt/ssl/lib -lssl -lcrypto' ./configure -openssl-linked

To disable SSL support in a Qt build, configure Qt with the -no-openssl option.

Licensing Information

Note: Due to import and export restrictions in some parts of the world, we are unable to supply the OpenSSL Toolkit with Qt packages. Developers wishing to use SSL communication in their deployed applications should either ensure that their users have the appropriate libraries installed, or they should consult a suitably qualified legal professional to ensure that applications using code from the OpenSSL project are correctly certified for import and export in relevant regions of the world.

When the Qt Network module is built with SSL support, the library is linked against OpenSSL in a way that requires OpenSSL license compliance.