Learn How SSL Works
Know How SSL Encryption Protects Your Website
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology protects transactions between your Web site and visitors. The protocol uses a third party, a Certificate Authority (CA), to identify one end or both end of the transactions. This is in short how it works.
- A browser requests a secure page (usually https://).
- Once secure transaction is initiated. The web server sends its public key with its certificate.
- The browser checks that the certificate was issued by a trusted party (usually a trusted CA such as RapidSSL, DigiCert, Thawte, GeoTrust, Comodo etc), that the certificate is still valid and that the certificate is related to the site contacted.
- The browser then uses the public key, to encrypt a random symmetric encryption key and sends it to the server with the encrypted URL required as well as other encrypted http data.
- The web server decrypts the symmetric encryption key using its private key and uses the symmetric key to decrypt the URL and http data.
- The web server sends back the requested html document and http data encrypted with the symmetric key.
- The browser decrypts the http data and html document using the symmetric key and displays the information.
