One day Minnie was shopping at the grocery store where she saw Mickey
Minnie – Hey Mickey! How are you?
Mickey – Err Ah! Minnie, I m good!
Minnie – You look lost, What happened?
Mickey – Nothing much!
Minnie – Common, you can tell me
Mickey – You see I have been at my house the whole day and was trying to understand SSL but the topic looks so difficult to me
Minnie – Oh come on. Don’t worry I will tell you
Mickey – Great
Minnie – Let’s say you have a box of precious stones and you need it to be delivered to your friend who lives across the town
Mickey – Wow
Minnie – Here you want to ensure that the box does not get stolen or corrupted (changed) while on its way
Mickey – Of course
Minnie – So you hire an armored car to pick up the box and transport it to your friend’s address
Mickey – That would do
Minnie – Here the armored car ensures that no one can access or get to your box while it’s traveling. This is called encryption.
Encryption is an impenetrable defense so that nobody can get your information while it’s wandering in the uncontrolled zone of the internet
Mickey – I get it
Minnie – Also, here you specified your friend’s address and the car has to deliver the box to a specific address, this is called authentication
Authentication ensures that the party receiving your valuable information is indeed the party you expect it to be
Mickey – Very well
Minnie – Now SSL on the internet takes care of this process of transporting our data or information securely to the right address
SSL – Secure Sockets Layer
SSL is the standard implementation for establishing a secure and encrypted link between two points on the internet — say your computer and a web server
It has since been updated to SSL/TLS or Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security, but it is still known simply as SSL for simplicity.
It is also the basis for secure HTTP or HTTPS — it is basically a website transported through hypertext transfer protocol that goes through a secure, encrypted connection
Mickey – I am trying to get this
Minnie – Okay Mickey have you seen when you visit some website and its HTTPS, you see a padlock along with the address on the address bar of the browser
Mickey – Yes, I see this
Minnie – The padlock indicates that an encrypted SSL session is in place right now.
Mickey – That means any information sent or received from this site will be encrypted and cannot be spied or stolen by malicious software on the internet
Minnie – Great you got it, and in simple words, it means this site is secure and is using SSL
Mickey – I am smart
Minnie – Yes, and to enable SSL security a website need to acquire a certificate called an SSL certificate
Mickey – What exactly is an SSL Certificate?
Minnie – SSL communications are enabled by certificates. A certificate is a file that is installed on a server
The certificate contains information about the identity of the owner of a URL or IP address that can be detected and used by the client machine to confirm that identity.
The certificate is specific to the URL or IP address for that server, and its presence on the machine enables the trust mechanisms and encryption that come with an SSL session
Certificates are protected by hashing algorithms to ensure they are genuine and tamper-proof
Mickey – Okay so an SSL certificate is required to enable SSL security on websites
Minnie – Right Mickey
Mickey – Great, I can now explain SSL to anyone
Minnie – Great so do you want to go home now
Mickey – No, let’s go to the riverside and watch the sunset
Minnie – Sure, let’s go
Mickey – You are my best friend Minnie
Minnie – I am always here for you 🙂
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References
https://www.geocerts.com/introduction-to-ssl
https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/07/20/ssl-important-secure-web-browsing/
