Secure Sockets Overview in Using Secure Sockets (TLS)

Secure Sockets allow the user to transport data over a public network giving both parties the ability to authenticate each other, and to encrypt the data being sent.

The Secure Sockets architecture provides a generic client interface, and a server to which particular protocol modules can be plugged in. A client uses a protocol by supplying protocol-specific parameters to Secure Sockets API functions.

The plug-in provided supports Transport Layer Security (TLS) v1.0 (see IETF RFC2246 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2246.txt) and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) v3.0. The protocols use the sockets method to allow data to be passed between a client and a server in a way that is designed to prevent security breaches.

The diagram below shows the relationship between applications and secure sockets.

A secure socket DLL is created, and applications link against this library directly. The secure socket library finds and loads implementation DLLs as and when needed at run time.

Secure sockets implementations are used to secure an already open and connected RSocket. The CSecureSocket class is instantiated by applications with a reference to an already connected RSocket.

The protocol information interface is provided by MSecureSocket.

Sockets Client Overview

Secure Sockets Overview

Purpose

Architectural relationships

Description

See also