MSIE cryptography

[Peter Trei]

John Hemming - CEO MarketNet"  <johnhemming at mkn.co.uk> writes:

> Just downloaded the most recent English Version 2.1 for Windows 3.1.
> This does appear to do the same in terms of no encryption at all after
> the server hello.
> 
> To be fair to Microsoft the number of cycles performed for the private key
> echange is quite high.  Therefore, not having any key and not doing the
> RSA calculations makes the access quite a bit faster.
> 
> The older versions (and some Win95 versions) that we have found around
> seem to just crash our server.  I am not really feeling like debugging that.

I understand that some versions of MSIE support SSL level 3. SSL3 includes a
capability to switch 'cipher suites' in mid-session, or pick one at the start of the
session. One of the standard cipher suites performs authentication, but not 
encryption. This is consistant with your description.

Please ensure that the server you are connecting to is not configured for
authenticate-only. It would be a pity to raise a big ruckus over what may be
just a mis-configured server.

Peter Trei
trei at process.com