SSL without HTTP

Question

All,

It is possible to use IIS (or similar) to handle the ssl side of https communications. Is there something similar that can handle the ssl side of a TCP/IP message?

Basically I have a client device sending a non-http message over a TCP connection and want a server that can handle the crypto and certificate side of SSL for me and forward the plain text on to another server.

The openSSL s_server command seems correct but the documentation states "It's intended for testing purposes only" while I need something robust. Is the documentation out of date?

Thanks, Patrick

Answer 1

It sounds like you want an SSL tunnel. You could setup a tunnel to the SSL server, send the packets through the tunnel, and then have that server forward the result on. There are lots of tutorials on using SSH to setup tunnels over SSL.

Answer 2

I don't think the documentation is out of date. "For testing purposes only" is their release from liability.

Answer 3

You are after the stunnel program:

Stunnel is a program that allows you to encrypt arbitrary TCP connections inside SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) available on both Unix and Windows. Stunnel can allow you to secure non-SSL aware daemons and protocols (like POP, IMAP, LDAP, etc) by having Stunnel provide the encryption, requiring no changes to the daemon's code.