>-----Original Message-----
>From: Arthur Chan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>Hi Boyle,
>I've been debating with myself over whether to encrypt
>everything, that's a
>cogent argument you have offered. I have a few questions myself :
>(1) assuming an openssl encrypted packet is bigger than a
>plain text one,
Why would you assume this? Essentially;
encrypted_text = f(plain_text, key)
where f() is a mathematical function. I guess the 2nd law of thermodynamics ("entropy
increases") would tend to cause the output to increase but not necessarily by much. In
the simple case of a substitutional cipher, the encrypted text would be precisely the
same size as the plain text.
>would mod_gzip shrink it significantly to warrant the effort?
Zipping algorithms work by replacing repetitive sequences in the input with shorter
instructions to regenerate them (e.g. 1000 blue pixels -> "1 blue pixel x 1000").
Compression works best with highly structured input data (bitmaps, WAV files, human
language etc). With random data, it can't make much difference and will even cause the
file to grow! (try repeatedly zipping a file to see this happening).
>(2) and would that slow down the client browser display of content ?
Unzipping requires the client to have winzip - not a default on a windows client!
Probably this would slow the whole thing down.
Remember that SSL is well-defined on the web and all recent browsers contain fast and
effective SSL software - I would trust it to do its job and not try to re-invent the
wheel.
Rgds,
Owen Boyle
Disclaimer: Any disclaimer attached to this message may be ignored.
>On the other hand, with these new 1GHz+ P4 desk- and lap-tops
>around, maybe
>not.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Boyle Owen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 04:49 PM
>Subject: RE: configuration question
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Henrik Bentel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>I have a web app which serves both static and non static content, both
>>secure and unsecure(https and http).
>>Now, all my ssl configuration is under my secure virtual host,
>>such that it applies to everything. However, I have quite a bit static
>>content(images, css, javascript.,...) which doesn't need to be very
>secure. I
>>somewhat only want to secure my dynamic content.
>
>To add to Cliff's comment about browsers complaining about the mix of
>secure an insecure content there is a genuine security reason for *not*
>doing what you propose.
>
>Put yourself in the position of a crook who has gained access to the
>datastream flowing into your SSL server. As you are probably aware, all
>encryption ciphers can be cracked by a brute force attack (making
>repeated attempts at guesssing the key). Hopefully, the time-to-crack
>will be "long", but you don't know how fast the crook's computer is. If
>he works for the NSA, it might be very fast indeed. If you serve all
>content via SSL, he has no idea which packets are important and which
>are just images etc. so he has to crack everything. If you decide to
>save a teeny bit of processing on the server by encrypting only the
>important things, he then sees lots of "en clair" packets (containing
>image data etc.) which he can safely ignore and only a few occasional
>nuggets of encrypted data which he can be sure are worth cracking. Thus
>he can focus his efforts on these. Therefore, you make life
>easy for the
>cracker by highlighting the packets that are worth cracking! In other
>words, the best place to hide a leaf is in the forest.
>
>You shouldn't need to worry about the processing load of the SSL
>encryption. If it is slowing your server, then, frankly, your server is
>not powerful enough to serve the traffic you have - get more memory,
>upgrade the chipset, do whatever is necessary to get up to speed.
>
>Rgds,
>Owen Boyle
>Disclaimer: Any disclaimer attached to this message may be ignored.
>
>>But, I don't want to generate absolute URLs on the fly to link to
>>non-secure static content. What I want is to make request to
>>certain urls
>>"less secure" such that processing is faster. For example, I have a
>>directory called art, which is just a defined alias for a
>>directory. Is
>>there a way to make ssl processing for this directory less
>>restrictive than
>>for the "generic requests" to the virtual host so that
>>processing is faster?
>>
>>Home someone can help
>>
>>Henrik Bentel
>>
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