ITISSL

A Java 2 Implementation of the SSL API based on SSLeay

What is ITISSL?

ITISSL is a clean room implementation of Sun's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) API based on SSLeay or its successor OpenSSL They are the free implementations of Netscape's Secure Socket Layer. SSLeay's author is Eric Young. Many thanks to Eric Young and Tim Hudson for providing SSLeay and its documentation, because...

This product includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com)

If you use OpenSSL,

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit. (http://www.OpenSSL.org/)

Note that redistributions of this package together with the SSLeay/OpenSSL libraries must comply to the SSLeay License, respectively to the OpenSSL license. The package itself is distributed under the GNU Public License, and does not contain SSLeay or OpenSSL source code.

This software requires Java 2 and SSLeay 0.8.1 (or later) or OpenSSL. It has been tested on WinNT 4.0/i386 , Linux/i386 (Kernel version 2.0.36 or latter) and Sparc-Solaris machines.

What you get with ITISSL

First of all, ITISSL provides you a FREE implementation of the SSL reference API. This means: creating secure connections over the Internet becomes as simple as a
```
 new SSLeaySocket("myhost",2345) 
```
instruction.
ITISSL comes with ready to use RMI classes and tools for secure RMI. This means, you don't have to spend time extending ITISSL to fit RMI; this is already done.
ITISSL comes with a wrapper for applications which already use SSL (such as hotjava), but due to USA - export restrictions contain only castrated versions of the SSL implementation. The shotjava wrapper enables you to use the hotjava browser with strong crypto.

Distribution

LICENSE for ITISSL

ITISSL download

Documentation

Installing ITISSL

The README file shows you how to build and install ITISSL. Reaad the troubleshooting section if something goes wrong.

Using ITISSL

Read the packages overview sumary to see how to correctly use and extend ITISSL. Each package overview documents how to use and extend the corresponding package.

The de.tu_darmstadt.sp.example package shows concrete examples of programms using ITISSL. They include links to the source code.

"Using" ITISSL means (as with any other SSL application) creating, managing, removing, signing certificates, setting pass-phrases, etc. ITISSL does not has its own certificate/private key administration tools. Users are encouraged instead to use the very good ssleay or openssl tools for this purpose. Frederick Hirsch has written a paper on this: Introducing SSL and Certificates using SSLeay

Tool Documentation

ITISSL comes together with some applications like 'shotjava' (a hotjava wrapper), srmiregistry ( a 'secure' rmiregistry) which help using SSL. Here follow some links on how to used these programms:

The sfindcerts manual
The srmiregistry manual
The shotjava manual
The ITISSL apps options. Some of the ITISSL applications (such as the test applications) are generated. The list of options specified above is usually supported by ITISSL applications.

Problems

The ITISSL package is in its early development stages. Any help would be greatly appreciated! You can send a mail to Andrei Popovici if you have problems, fixes, or suggestions.Try also the Open ssl mailing list mailing list, since we expect many of the problems to be SSLeay related.

The sp.ssl problems is a good place to start with if something doesn't seem to work (java-related stuff). Check out the TODO list for further open problems. We also have a troubleshooting section.

The ITISSL package was writen at the

Author: Andrei Popovici.

Contributors: Gabor Herr, Klaus Guntermann

Copyright (C) 1999 Andrei Popovici

Verbatim copying and distribution of this documentation is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.