Opera

The TLS (Transport Layer Security) Protocol is the result of further development based on the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) version 3.0 (developed by Netscape).

The development has been made by a Work Group in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) over the last couple of years. TLS has now been accepted as a Proposed Standard by the standards group overseeing internet standards.

The message structure is mostly the same as in SSL v3, but many of the fundamental (cryptographical) formulas used to calculate encryption keys and so on has been changed to improve security.

The protocol is designed to let a client (browser, in our case) and a server, to agree on a method of encrypted communication, optionally verify each others identities, exchange secret information needed to create encryption keys. The messages sent between the client and the server are then encrypted using the agreed upon keys. Each part of the message contains a signature verifiying the authenticity of the message part (the signature is very difficult to counterfeit without knowing the secret exchanged when the connection was set up).