Cloud Native Programming with Golang

Symmetric-key algorithms in HTTPS

Now, let's return to the world of web applications and HTTP. In general, web applications are just different pieces of software that communicate using the HTTP protocol. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, to secure HTTP and transform it to HTTPS, we will combine it with another protocol called TLS. The TLS protocol makes use of symmetric-key algorithms to encrypt HTTP data between a client and a server. In other words, the web client and the web server start their communication by agreeing on a shared encryption key (some call it a shared secret), which is then used to protect the data going back and forth between them.

The sender application uses the key to encrypt the data before sending it to the recipient ...