CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jssslhttpsrequest
Quoc Van Tang
Quoc Van Tang

Reputation: 1193

Is SSL secure connection available without browser call?

I have a question about SSL. As I know, when we use browser to request from https server, it will make an SSL handshake first then all data will be encryption in the connection. But if I make a request without browser (like request module in nodejs, postman...), will it be an SSL handshake and data encryption on the connection? Anyone know please explain to me, thank you.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 441

Answers (1)

Patrick Mevzek
Patrick Mevzek

Reputation: 12595

First, stop saying SSL. Its successor is TLS, and it will have 20 years next January.

TLS is a protocol sitting on top of TCP typically (other variants can also use UDP), and provides on top of TCP features some new features about endpoints authentication and transport confidentiality and integrity.

In a way, you can understand it as being sandwiched between TCP and the higher level application protocol, like HTTP.

Saying otherwise you can use many others protocols on top of TLS: you have all email related ones (SMTP, IMAP, POP, etc.), you can have FTP on top of it (while probably not a good idea nowadays), XMPP for realtime communications, etc.

In short, any protocol using TCP could use TLS with some adaptation.

So HTTP is one case among others. HTTP is between an HTTP client and an HTTP server, or webserver for short.

A browser is an HTTP client. One among many ones. When you use curl or wget you are also an HTTP client. So if any HTTP client access an http:// link it will first do the TLS handshake, after the TCP connection and before starting to do anything really related to the HTTP protocol.

You have specialized libraries dealing with TLS so that not all program need to recode everything about this again, since it is also complicated.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions