by
Wilfred Verkley >> Thu, 1 Feb 2001 4:19:35 GMT
Typically when you want this sort of functionality, you don't only need encryption. You probably want authentication (the ability to ensure you are talking only to authorized people), and the ability to tamper-proof your communication as well.
The industry standard for this sort of stuff is SSL (secure sockets layer) which is a protocol that provides a secure way of communicating over TCP/IP connections. An easy way to implement this independently of Jade is to use a SSL Proxy. Your client connects normally to a local proxy, which then connects securely to another proxy elsewhere close to the destination using SSL, which then makes a normal connection to your server. The whole process is invisible to Jade, and you would write your code the same as you always would, except that your client connects to the proxy, not directly to the server. Also, because its not integrated with Jade, you might still have to use some other mechanism like a username/password for authenticating the client to Jade itself.
Jade provides some hooks for these things on the TCP/IP connection class, but it requires you to write your own encryption and authentication routines. As far as I know, none are supplied, and if this is genuinly sensitive information, i wouldnt recommend it anyway. I know that there are SSL hooks for the thin client though, so it must have been looked at.
Some free SSL proxies can be found at:
http://www.delegate.org/delegate/ssl/ http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html
Information on the open source version of SSL (OpenSSL) can be found at :
http://www.openssl.org
Regards,
Wilfred.