J2EE™ and Beyond: Design, Develop, and Deploy World-Class Java™ Software

Introduction

While the Internet has done much to create a flexible wide area network open to all, this remnant of Arpanet and academia also leaves gaping security holes for hackers to exploit. The most significant downside of the Internet is that network traffic on the Internet travels from node to node, so even the relatively unskilled hacker can sniff the clear text packets on the network and determine what is being passed.

For any enterprise concerned about moving sensitive data over this open network, these security weaknesses could be a serious issue. In response to these issues, very early in the adoption of the Internet, Netscape developed a standard for secure network socket connections known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This standard ...