The need for secure transmission

In recent years there has been a rapid growth in computer communications. The Internet, which had at the time this article was written about 60,000,000 members world wide, is the most outstanding example.
The massive use of computer communications,  arose some security problems, because of the nature of the Internet and the way it works, almost anyone can 'read' anything that is sent over it. This makes business transactions over the Internet unsecured since one could learn details such as credit card numbers and other secret information from eavesdropping on the Internet. Impresonation and fraud are also easy to acomplish when communications are not secure.
These problems, that prevent massive commercial use over the Internet, drove Netscape, toghether with some other leading companies in the computer communication field, to write a protocol that will ensure communications privacy over the Internet, this protocol is called SSL.

 1> The SSL Protocol
 2> Why is SSL Secure?
 3> Basic Encryption Definitions
 4> Quiz
 

All of the sources for this project are from the netscape security documentation. Hyperlinks to all sources can be found at http://home.netscape.com/assist/security/ssl/index.html .

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