Transport Layer Security for UserLand's Manila and Radio UserLand
TLS enhances both Manila and Radio by providing scripts for accessing secure websites and services and for serving secure websites.
What is TLS?
The really simple answer: it's SSL. TLS includes SSL. Think of it as "SSL Plus." TLS stands for Transport Layer Security -- its a protocol that ensures privacy between communicating applications and their users on the Internet. When a server and a client communicate, TLS makes sure that no third party can eavesdrop or tamper with any message that is passed between them. UserLand's TLS Module provides this connection security and allows the server and client to authenticate each other and to negotiate an encryption algorithm and cryptographic keys before data is exchanged. From a standard's perspective, TLS is a proposed IETF standard that supercedes Netscape's Secure Socket Layer (SSL).
As the name suggests, the purpose of the protocol is to provide encryption and certification at the transport layer (in this case, TCP), so that data can flow through a secure channel without requiring significant changes to the client and server applications. One widespread use for this technology is in "HTTPS" or secure HTTP communications.
UserLand's TLS provides client side tools for making secure HTTPS requests and server side tools for running a secure web server. It also includes tools for creating and managing "keys," self-signed certificates, and "certificate signing requests" (for sending to companies like Verisign, Thawte, or Komodo, to receive a valid server certificate).