previous |
start |
next
Advanced Topics
The technology of E-Commerce is evolving rapidly, and there are
many topics we haven't covered. Today we look at two of these.
- Site Certificates
- issued by a trusted service, these digital signature-based
certificates are sent by a server to prove that it is who it
purports to be; that is, that it really is (eg)
http://amazon.com
and not
http://hackers-r-us.com
masquerading as them.
- Secure Sockets Layer
- SSL is a public key encryption system. A server can publish its
public key in association with its site certificate. The public key
can then be used to communicate securely. You can tell if a server
uses SSL for a document if the URL starts with
https://...
Also, if you're using Netscape, the little
"key"or padlock icon will change. On the other hand, encryption is
computationallyheavy, so it's typically not used for normal Web
pages.
previous |
start |
next