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jan97.tar


New Messages

Please send letters via email to saletter@mfi.com.

From: David S. Trush (dtrush@nesdis.noaa.gov)
Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C.

According the the article by Arthur Donkers, "Building a Secure Web Site" in the October 1996 issue, SSL software is available from RSA, apparently for a price. I am trying to find out if an SSL or similar program is available from somewhere (e.g., GNU Alliance) for free.

Thanks! Great mag, very useful information. Keep up the good work !

Thank you! Please let me clear things up a bit. SSL is a protocol for securing Internet communications. It originated at NetScape, but server and client applications using SSL are available from multiple vendors.

I mentioned RSA because: the public domain version of the SSL library that I used for the system described in the article, uses the RSA algorithm for authentication. This algorithm is copyrighted in the United States by RSA Inc. So, if you would like to use this SSL library (which by the way, was written in Australia, by an Australian) for commercial purposes (and probably for government use as well) you have to buy a license from RSA. For testing purposes, you can always use the RSARef implementation from RSA Inc., which is available through their ftp site.

If you are outside the US, you can use the rsaeuro package, which is compatible with RSARef (and thus RSA).

So, there are no technical limitations, but it all boils down to patents and licenses. The RSA algorithm itself is patented, and there is no way around it.

Arthur Donkers
Le Reseau

Your magazine is one of the few that I read from cover to cover, and I would like to see articles on taking old character-based apps and moving them into browsers.

unix ---- terminal

unix ---- httpd/html ---- browsers

How? What works best - or even, don't do it....

Thanks,
Dale Phillips dphillip@tabfs.com

Are there any readers interested in submitting this type of article? If so, email me with your proposals or write to saletter@mfi.com with suggestions. Thank you.

- AA

I purchased the (presumably) first two of your "Reference Reprint Series" booklets and found them very informative/useful. I was wondering if there were more in the series and how I could get information about them?

Thank you for your time and assistance,
Paul Horine
Systems Administrator
UCSF Radiation Oncology

The third (Performance Monitoring) and fourth (Security) in the series will be released in February and March of 1997. They will be in an enlarged format, each with 19 chapters and about 320 pages (rather than 6 chapters & about 120 pages as in volumes 1&2) under the new series title Sys Admin Essential Reference Series.

The cost for the books will be $24.95 each.

Thanks for your interest and support. It is always good to hear that we are providing useful information.

Berney Williams
Acquisitions Editor
R&D Books/Miller Freeman