Setting up a secure Web server and clients on an intranet

Abstract

The paper discusses the practical issues that arise when securing the access to the World Wide Web (WWW). A brief overview of the different protocols that are proposed to secure the WWW is given and the current status of the U.S. export regulations is reviewed. An attack on SSL 2.0 is detailed which exploits some of the weaknesses in this protocol. The setup of a secure server with access control is explained. At the client side, existing solutions to provide export browsers with strong cryptography are evaluated, and the authors also introduce some improvements. Finally, the performance of the secure system is evaluated and compared to that of the regular HTTP connection.