Re: LYNX-DEV SSL on Lynx 2.7.1 (Linux)

[David Woolley]

> 
> I don't see why it is necessary to have your own cert (or whatever it's 
> called)
> in order to connect to an https/snews site.  (And I don't like running
                                  ^^^^^

Although I'm not familiar with SSL and snews, I cannot see any sensible 
(marketing ploys excepted) way of using a secure news server which doesn't
involve a client side certificate.


As I see it, the legitimate use of a secure channel for news is to restrict
the news to customers/employees.  For that, you need to positively identify
the client, and as, presumably that is one of the jobs of a client side
certificate, why use any other authentication method.  


The same would apply to an https site used for customer support, or access
by employees.


I strongly suspect that Netscape used snews, initially, as a ploy to force
people to access their site using their own browsers.  However, I never had
cause to do this, so I can't exclude that they may have had a legitimate use.
To the extent that it was a ploy, Lynx is always vulnerable to such tricks.


(Incidentally, the lack of SSL support on our company proxy/firewall has not
caused any problems yet - we would have to masquerade at the IP level, rather
than proxy, losing our ability to cache - which is being eroded by active pages
anyway.  It would seem that customer support for the software industry is
not being provided by https, and only consumer orders are made over the web.

As to snews, the whole concept of a fragmented NNTP world (surely it should
be snntp! - one supplier we deal with does mis-use news:) causes problems for
the efficient use of a dial up link.)
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